More Good News: New Hampshire

We talked last week about the "bathroom bill" in New Hampshire, where the New England shower-nuts were successfully able to frame gender-identity discrimination in terms of men going into women's bathrooms. At that time, the state House voted to keep discrimination legal by a fifteen-vote margin.

They thought again about it and brought it to a second vote -- this is cool.

Concord – By a single vote, the New Hampshire House today reversed itself and passed a bill that bars discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The proposal was dubbed the "bathroom bill" by its opponents.

The bill, House Bill 415, allows individuals to bring actions at the Human Rights Commission when they feel they have been discriminated against on the basis of their sexual identity, or the way they express it, such as with their clothing or makeup. Trans-gender rights bill passes House by one vote

The Democratic governor did not endorse the bill, and it is not known if he will sign it.

Skipping down, the good part...

Early in the debate, Speaker of the House Terie Norelli, D-Portsmouth, took the unusual step of leaving her podium and speaking in favor of the bill. She said she was disappointed in debate two weeks ago, and by “the muddying of the waters” on the issue.

“New Hampshire and the New Hampshire General Court has always stood against discrimination. Somewhere along the way, that message got lost on this bill,” she said. “We’re not asking you to open up bathrooms to sexual predators. We’re asking you to stand tall against discrimination.”

Exactly!

The first time, the House voted on the basis of stuff that wasn't in the bill. They had a big budget to get out and debate was cut short, and the legislators voted on a "bathroom bill" after hearing from some shower-nuts about how the new law would cause things like men lurking in ladies restrooms, predators, pedophiles, and perverts waving their festering penises around in women's showers, that sort of thing. Say it again: “We’re not asking you to open up bathrooms to sexual predators. We’re asking you to stand tall against discrimination.”

Congratulations to those even-tempered folks up there in that chilly sliver of a state (where I spent the summer of my twentieth year working highway construction) for taking a second look at this issue. It's one thing to con the gullible members of the public like our local Montgomery County shower-nuts did, stopping people in front of the Giant and asking them to sign "a petition to keep men out of ladies' bathrooms." It is another thing altogether, a terrible irresponsible thing, for elected representatives to vote on such an ignorant misconstrual of an important bill.

The bill adds the words “gender identity or expression” to the state’s anti-discrimination laws that protect people from discrimination based on race, sex, religion, age, and national origin.

Sponsor Rep. Ed Butler, D-Hart's Location, said his bill simply protects people whose gender is an issue from discrimination in housing and the workplace.

Opponents said it will open bathrooms to sexual predators and child molesters and wrongly penalize employers, schools and churches.

We've heard this all before. In our county the Citizens for Responsible Whatever were able to get almost 16,000 valid petition signatures for a referendum in a county of approximately five hundred fifty thousand registered voters by lying to people about our nondiscrimination bill in exactly this same way. It costs a lot of money to counter a vivid lie, and luckily we didn't have to mount a full public-education campaign here.

In New Hampshire, the legislature voted and then thought better of it, and voted again. They realized they had made a mistake and they corrected it. That is the way to do it.