Richard Ober: NH should not threaten rights of LGBTQ community
Back in 2018, a very New Hampshire moment happened: The New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill affirming the rights of transgender people in the Granite State to be free from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation. People testifying in favor of the bill included major employers (discrimination is terrible for the economy), families and medical professionals. The bill had bipartisan support and was endorsed by a wide range of organizations — including the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Business and Industry Association and the House Libertarian Caucus.
Our state Senate concurred with the House and our Republican governor signed the measure into law (later, the measure was expanded to include public schools).
This moment represented a continuation of the Granite State’s commitment to protecting individual rights — New Hampshire’s legislature had also been among the first in the nation to pass marriage equality.
The 2018 law affirmed long-held New Hampshire values of community, inclusion, privacy and freedom — and with that freedom comes responsibility to one another and to our communities.
Today, those values are being tested.
Our current legislature has before it a slate of bills, which mimic similar legislation put forth around the country, that target LGBTQ people and attempt to separate them from their rights.
This broad move to erode rights hurts New Hampshire’s young people, families, businesses and communities. These measures, amplified by interests outside the state, have an insidious effect — even if they don’t pass. (They also take our legislature’s time and attention away from focusing on issues critical to hardworking Granite Staters — like the skyrocketing cost of housing and lack of affordable child care.)
These measures make LGBTQ young people feel unsafe and unwelcome — which can lead to or exacerbate anxiety and depression. They make families wonder if the New Hampshire to which they have devoted generations is a New Hampshire where they now belong. They make business leaders worry about losing valued employees — and being able to attract a desperately needed younger workforce, to whom inclusivity and belonging are paramount. And they put communities in danger of losing important voices, volunteers, neighbors and taxpayers.
That’s not New Hampshire.
At the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, our purpose is to make New Hampshire a more just, sustainable and vibrant community where everyone can thrive. Discrimination helps no one to thrive — not the people being targeted, not the families and communities and economies in which they live, not other marginalized groups who fear they could be targeted next.
Six years ago, a parent of a transgender child submitted this testimony about the bill that became our current law:
“My son is the most upstanding citizen I know. He cares deeply about our community, about our state and about our country. He is a junior in college and he works. He volunteers, he votes, and he is the kind of kid who is the first in line to help when a friend or neighbor is in need. My son deserves the same protection under the law that every other New Hampshire citizen enjoys.”
At the time, it seemed so basic. New Hampshire needs that young person to thrive in community and career right here in the state where he was born. We need him to know he belongs here, because we need him. We need that family to stick around and keep working here and paying taxes here and volunteering in their community.
Our LGBTQ families, friends, neighbors and allies deserve to live in a New Hampshire community where they are safe, where they are respected, where they belong. As the legislature and governor have correctly recognized in the past — and as they should again — that kind of New Hampshire community is better for us all.
Richard Ober is president and chief executive officer of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. This op-ed was distributed by the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Richard Ober: NH should not threaten rights of LGBTQ community
