What About New Hampshire?
“What about New Hampshire?” Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, posed to an audience of over 25 people from the transgender and allied community in the Portsmouth, New Hampshire region last Thursday night. The gathering was one of two community meetings that I helped organized, along with Gerri Cannon, President of the PFLAG NH Chapter, in order to build support for House Bill 415, which would add anti-discrimination protections for transgender individuals in New Hampshire.
The question that Mara, one of our guest speakers, posed to the group was one that had been asked by national politicians whose support was needed in order to pass the national Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in Congress. Why should they pass employment protections for transgender individuals nationally, if we, in New Hampshire and the remaining New England states still without such protections (i.e. Connecticut and Massachusetts) have not done so yet?
It was a valid question with an equally valid response. It is our responsibility in New Hampshire and throughout New England, as leaders in the forefront of the LGBT equality movement, to set an example by passing non-discrimination protections for transgender individuals promptly and without delay.
And that leadership and energy was well reflected in the group that gathered that cold night in Portsmouth. It included Representative Ed Butler, the proud lead sponsor of House Bill 415, who has come to each of the community meetings Gerri and I organized to explain why he thought that this bill was not only necessary, but could also pass this session in the state legislature – if we do the work to create grassroots support.
It included our host, Seacoast Outright, an LGBT youth organization that has provided support and programming in the Portsmouth area for the last 15 years. Many of those youth came to the community meeting to get involved in politics for the first time.
And it included an elderly couple in their 70s who I met that night – a mother with an enormous button on her cardigan that declared, “I’m a proud PFLAG mom,” and her husband standing at her side. Their gay son had passed away over a decade ago after a painful battle with AIDS, and they continue to fight for LGBT rights in honor of his memory. For them, it was a no brainer that New Hampshire should protect its transgender citizens from discrimination.
New Hampshire has the opportunity this legislative session to be a leader and remind those in Washington and throughout the country what true equality looks like by passing full non-discrimination protections for transgender individuals. Please help us in that effort now by learning more here.