Headlines from the Granite State
A happy victory
Littleton voters in mid-March elected pro-LGBTQ+ Kerri Harrington to replace Carrie Gendreau on their town’s select board, effectively ending the controversy Gendreau stirred up last summer when she threatened to ban all public displays of art in her effort to keep North Country Pride from displaying a mural during Pride month.
In a stroke of poetic justice, Harrington is also cochair of North Country Pride.
The brouhaha over the murals brought about a rise in homophobic behavior among some residents that even led to the resignation of the town manager, whose late son was gay, after one resident told him she was “happy his son was in hell.”
“Clearly with this vote, that’s not what people want,” Harrington told the Boston Globe. “They want progress and inclusion.”
For her part, Gendreau, also serving as a Republican state senator, resigned before the election.
See the complete story on page 46 of this issue.
Opt out bill passes House
By a narrow margin—with three Republicans voting with the Democrats in an attempt to block it—a Republican-backed bill passed the New Hampshire House of Representatives that would mandate school officials to inform parents if their children are questioning their sexuality or gender identity at school, if the parents ask them. The policy would, however, still allow exceptions in cases where such disclosures could result in “abuse, abandonment or neglect,” according to a report in the Boston Globe.
Further, the bill would allow parents to opt their children out of instruction about sexual orientation and gender identification.
The legislation now heads to the state’s Senate.
“This bill would cause censoring in health education classes and in all other instruction and curriculum that reference LGBTQ people,” Rep. Hope Damon of Sunapee told the Globe. “It could apply to books assigned in history class on women achieving the right to vote, on marriage equality, on the Stonewall uprising, and so much more.”
The legislation moved to the state’s Senate in mid-March.
‘Let our kids play’
In late March, the state’s House advanced another anti-LGBTQ+ bill to the Senate; this one would exclude transgender students from participating in school sports.
Seacoast Outright Executive Director Heidi Carrington Health responded in a public statement that “We are deeply disappointed in today’s vote on HB1205. NH has consistently affirmed the rights and dignity of all students, and LGBTQ+ youth. Singling out a vulnerable group of students for exclusion from sports at school is not in line with Granite State values. Trans girls, like all girls and women, deserve to be fully included. Team sports offer a protective factor, and sense of belonging for many students. Stripping an already vulnerable population of their right to participate puts them at higher risk. Trans girls and women simply want a chance to participate, and be included—nothing more, nothing less. All we are asking is to let our kids play.”
Honoring Prescod-Weinstein
In March, LGBTQ Nation featured University of New Hampshire physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein in a series on LGBTQ+ women leaders in honor of Women’s History Month.
“Innovation is at the heart of everything she does, including the cross-disciplinary writing of her PEN Award-winning book “The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred” to her advocacy for equity and inclusion in science and beyond,” the article introduces the Black feminist scholar.
Says Prescod-Weinstein, who identifies as a queer, agender woman and uses she/they pronouns, “As queer people, the thing that we offer is another way of being in the world.” Says LGBTQ+ Nation, “If diverse minds are excluded from science and academia, this valuable perspective can be lost.”
Not a subscriber? Sign up today for a free subscription to Boston Spirit magazine, New England’s premier LGBT magazine. We will send you a copy of Boston Spirit 6 times per year and we never sell/rent our subscriber information. Click HERE to sign up!
