Just weeks after getting a Satanic Temple statue mounted outside the State House, Newmarket Democrat Rep. Ellen Read asked her fellow legislators to drop the word “prayer” on the inside.
It was one of the many rule changes considered by the New Hampshire House Wednesday, the vast majority of which were rejected by the 400-member body.
Read’s proposal “simply changes our word for our morning invocation before session, which currently says ‘prayer’ to ‘reflection,’” Read told the House. “Reflection is more inclusive of a broad range of beliefs — not just people who are secular, but also there are a number of religions that do not do what we call ‘pray,’ or have anything we define as a deity. There are non-theist religions like Buddhism, and this would allow those religions to also be represented.
“And therefore, we would be more representative of the state as a whole,” Read said.
While Read’s amendment to the rules was defeated, 160 members of the House voted for it. No roll call of the 160-222 vote was taken, but multiple House members told NHJournal the majority of the support was among Democrats, though they believed some libertarian-leaning Republicans backed it as well.
Read made headlines last month after reaching out to the Salem, Mass.-based Satanic Temple with the idea for a display of the goat-headed Baphomet statue, the symbol of the Church of Satan. At the time, Read argued that the Knights of Columbus’ Nativity scene should not be the only display outside the state house during the Christmas season.
House Majority Leader Rep. Jason Osborne released a statement in response to Read’s effort to strip the word “prayer” from the House rules.
“It is not surprising that the same party that spent the last month fighting to put a statue of Satan outside of the State House is now trying to remove prayer from the New Hampshire House,” said Osborne. “While the Democrats continue to advocate for literal Satan himself, Republicans took one look at their alarming proposal and tore it down like a tacky statue on the sidewalk. I hope that today’s continued rejection of Satanism sent House Democrats the message they desperately need to hear, ‘Y’all need Jesus’.”
Cornerstone Action, a group that advocates for New Hampshire’s Christian community, posted on Twitter/X: “The Satanic Temple are atheists who don’t really pray to Satan. But they love to reflect on their disdain for Christians & ways to spite us. Read’s next motion will be to introduce all new bills in the Year of Baphomet.”
With a 221-177-1 GOP majority, Read’s anti-prayer proposal was always unlikely to pass. The same of her call to mandate the use of the gender-neutral term “chair” rather than “chairman” or “chairwoman.” It was defeated in a 175-208 vote.
However, their 44-seat majority wasn’t enough to pass rule changes backed by GOP leadership, either.
A proposal backed by House Speaker Sherm Packard (R-Londonderry) allowing committees to dump the required public hearing for legislation by a three-fourths vote never even saw the light of day. Bipartisan grumbling led to the rule being tabled.
Meanwhile, a proposal backed by Packard to codify the House’s subpoena powers — which supporters said would allow individuals to be held in contempt for noncompliance — failed 152-229.
State Rep. Mike Belcher (R-Wakefield) was the first to speak out against the proposal Wednesday, calling it “unnecessary.”
“Under current rules, issuing a subpoena in this House is an impossible possibility,” he said. “This codifies a practical impossibility into an actual impossibility.”
State Rep. Lucy Weber (D-Walpole) agreed with the GOP lawmaker.
“The thing that is most difficult for me is that it adds the speaker’s enforcement powers,” Weber, who serves on the House Rules Committee, said. “We were told there would be a follow-up that would elaborate on the speaker’s enforcement powers, but I don’t know what’s in that bill.”
Republicans did manage to chalk up other wins Wednesday, including passage of a new rule to waive disciplinary measures against members who accidentally display a lawful firearm.
After the rule change, state Rep. David Meuse (D-Portsmouth) proposed a measure to bar individuals from exercising their right-to-carry inside the State House.
“Most folks have no idea New Hampshire legislators can carry concealed weapons on the House Floor,” Meuse wrote in a social media post. “Today, the House GOP majority not only voted down my attempt to prohibit carrying guns in the People’s House, but they also made it harder to discipline those openly displaying them.”
Meuse’s post prompted a rash of responses, including from fellow members.
“The general public can carry in the House too,” Belcher wrote, quoting Meuse while adding a smiling emoji.
And a dress code rule proposed by Assistant Majority Leader Jeanine Notter (R-Merrimack) was also rejected by the rank and file.
During the debate, state Rep. Brian Sullivan (D-Grantham) pointed out that “proper business attire” is “not defined in statute nor in rules.”
The source Sullivan said he finally turned to for a definition?
“Google, of course,” he said, drawing some chuckles from his colleagues. “So I Googled it and what I found was that proper business attire is not being followed by a large number of people in this chamber today, including me.”
Sullivan, dressed in a collared shirt, tie, and dark-colored blazer, said he wasn’t wearing dress shoes.
“I don’t wear dress shoes because I’ve got a big knot on my right big toe,” he explained. “I’m also not wearing proper dress slacks — I think they look OK, my wife even said I looked nice as I left this morning.
“The bottom line is, if this is enforced and taken seriously by a future speaker we would have a hard time dealing with all of the folks that would be in violation.”
One rank-and-file House GOP member summed up the day’s events for NHJournal in an off-the-record comment that leadership’s “eyes might be hungrier than their membership’s appetite.”
