The issue of girls-only spaces was front and center in New Hampshire politics again Thursday as a Republican’s veto of a single-sex public spaces bill was sustained, and a Democrat’s claim that there’s no “commonly accepted definition” of what a male is was rejected.
On the House floor, the vote to override Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto of HB 396 — derided by critics as the “bathroom bill” — failed 164-168, well short of the two-thirds required. Every Democrat voted against single-sex spaces, along with four Republicans.
“The challenge with HB 396 is that in some cases it seeks to solve problems that have not presented themselves in New Hampshire, and in doing so invites unnecessary discord,” Sununu said when he vetoed the bill in July.
Polls show Sununu and the Democrats are on the wrong side of the issue. A NHJournal/Praecones Analytica poll taken in May found a whopping 74 percent of Granite State voters support allowing school districts to have separate locker rooms and restrooms. Just 10 percent were opposed.
Deputy House Majority Leader Jim Kofalt (R-Wilton), a lead sponsor of the original bill, said he was “disappointed in the outcome” but indicated the issue is far from settled.
“When a young mother tearfully shares her story of her daughter facing bullying by a male student in a girls’ locker room, we have a responsibility to listen and respond to those concerns,” Kofalt said in a statement. “While I am disappointed in the outcome of today’s vote, House Republicans sent a clear message to all the parents trying to navigate these difficult circumstances: We hear you, and we will continue to stand with you.”
Sununu’s veto over the summer left conservatives puzzled, especially after he signed into law legislation barring biological males from competing in girls’ sports games. At a Republican gathering in August, former NCAA swimmer and current women’s sports activist Riley Gaines called out Sununu.
“The governor says, ‘I want to err on the side of compassion in vetoing HB 396.’ Really? Well, is it compassionate to ask a young girl to undress in front of a man? Is that what compassion is? I don’t think so,” Gaines said at the time.
Sununu has said he disagreed with the way HB 396 was written.
“The bathroom piece is kind of a reversal of what we’ve done,” Sununu told WMUR in July. “And HB 396 as a whole deals with the civil rights of an individual. It’s a bit broader, a bit tougher, especially on the legal issues. And I just don’t ultimately think it was written as well as it probably could have been.”
His “reversal” reference deals with prior legislation he signed in 2018 prohibiting “discrimination based on gender identity,” a measure that had support from GOP lawmakers.
While Republicans were fighting to allow biological women to have their own spaces, a Durham Democrat was publicly challenging the premise of biology itself.
Rep. Timothy Horrigan (D-Durham) published a letter in the Union Leader criticizing one of the newspaper’s reporters for writing, “a transgender athlete identified in court paperwork as a ‘biological male.’”
“This reference is a little misleading because the young woman at the center of the controversy is female,” Horrigan wrote, referring to a biological male playing on a girls soccer team. “She is living her life as a woman, and everyone close to her considers her to be female. She’s not male.”
Besides, added Horrigan, “The term ‘biological male’ has no commonly accepted definition.”
Horrigan’s claim is factually untrue. (“Relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to produce relatively small, usually motile gametes which fertilize the eggs of a female” — Merriam-Webster medical dictionary)
It was also immediately and widely mocked on social media, with a social media post getting tens of thousands of views and sparking hundreds of negative responses.
Horrigan isn’t new to the controversy. While testifying against legislation protecting female athletes from being forced to compete with biological males earlier this year, Horrigan mocked parents’ concerns as “anti-trans panic” and offered his own theory about human sexuality.
In the acronym LGBT, Horrigan said, “The ‘B’ stands for bisexual, and everybody is at least somewhat bisexual,” he insisted.
Gaines also rejected the term “biological male” during her New Hampshire visit, though for different reasons.
“When you say that, you’re implying that there’s a non-biological alternative to being a boy or a girl or a male or a female. There’s not. When I say ‘boy,’ I mean ‘boy.’ When I say ‘man,’ I mean ‘man.’ It’s really that simple.”
