The New Hampshire Senate passed a bill Thursday giving Granite State businesses and institutions the right to do what they’ve done for hundreds of years — limit access to spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms based on sex.
Senate Democrats were outraged.
“The same arguments being used today will be viewed by future generations with the same moral revulsion we now view segregation laws, anti-marriage-equality laws, and anti-discrimination laws,” said Sen. Debra Altschiller (D-Stratham). Transgender rights are human rights.”
The bill passed in a 16-8 party-line vote.
The legislation would protect businesses and organizations from claims of violating the state’s anti-discrimination laws if they “classify based on biological sex with respect to” bathrooms, locker rooms, prisons, and detention centers.
The law would also cover “athletic or sporting events or competitions in a sport or similar activity in which physical strength, speed, or endurance is generally recognized to give an advantage to biological males.”
Senate Democrats also unanimously opposed SB 211, requiring public schools to designate teams as either male, female, or coed, and “prohibit students who are male at birth from participating in female sports.”
Just hours after the vote, the University of New Hampshire Survey Center released a poll showing 71 percent of Granite Staters agree with Republicans on keeping males who identify as women out of women’s sports. Just 21 percent agree with Democrats.
In fact, a solid majority of voters in all of the deep-blue states of New England support the ban, UNH reports.
Democrats’ attempts to portray women-only bathrooms as the same as “White’s Only” restrooms of the Jim Crow era incensed some Republicans. State Senate President Sharon Carson took the unusual step of leaving the president’s chair to come to the floor and rebut those arguments.
“You talk about Jim Crow laws? Seriously? Just this week, through that wall in the House, a member of the House — who’s an African American — got up and spoke in favor of legislation like this,” Carson said, a reference to Rep. Jonah Wheeler (D-Peterborough)
“And what happened to that individual? They threw Jim Crow laws at him — an African American! How offensive is that? Plus, he had to have security take him out of the building because he didn’t feel safe. What is going on here?”
In the House, a bill banning the use of puberty blockers on minor children for the purpose of changing their sexual identity passed in a 197-167 vote. Wheeler and Rep. Dale Girard of Claremont were the only two Democrats to support it.
Four Republicans — Reps. Nicholas Bridle (Hampton), David Nagel (Gilmanton), John Sytek (Salem), and Susan Vandecasteele (Salem) — voted no.
