On March 12, voters in Littleton, New Hampshire elected pro-LGBTQ+ Kerri Harrington to replace a homophobic member of the town’s select board, effectively ending the controversy stirred up last summer by the former member, Carrie Gendreau, also a state senator, who threatened to ban all public art in her effort to keep North Country Pride from displaying their murals during Pride month last year.
The brouhaha over the murals had led to months of homophobic behavior among some residents of the town. “Clearly with this vote, that’s not what people want,” Harrington told the Boston Globe. “They want progress and inclusion.”
In a stroke of poetic justice, Harrington is also cochair of North Country Pride.
Reports the Globe:
In August, Gendreau criticized three paintings displayed on private property near the town’s main street, which had a pro-LGBTQ+ message and which had been sponsored in part by North Country Pride.
“I don’t want that to be in our town,” Gendreau said at an August 2023 select board meeting. As the select board considered options to restrict public art, members of the town grew concerned about the possibility of a ban on possible art.
A theater group putting on a play featuring a gay protagonist was also drawn into the controversy, as its relationship with the town became frayed and the possibility of a long term partnership to renovate a town-owned theater crumbled. The town manager Jim Gleason, whose late son was gay, resigned over the anti-LGBTQ+ remarks, after a resident insulted him, telling him she hoped his son was happy in hell.
The town is still looking to hire a new town manager.
Harrington and others in town view her election win as a referendum on the anti-LGBTQ controversy.
Read the complete Boston Globe story here.
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