Any one of the numerous bills headed to Gov. Sununu’s desk will be harmful to LGBTQ communities

SOCIAL ISSUES

Since 1999, the United States has recognized June as Pride Month, when the LGBTQ community and the civil rights of LGBTQ citizens in our country and across the globe are recognized, celebrated and honored.

Pride Month can be traced to the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City that sparked the gay pride movement and literally took the fight against government persecution and discrimination of sexual minorities to the streets. Although there were gay pride protests and movements before 1969, Stonewall was the first such event to be widely publicized and led to the formation of many gay rights organizations. It also helped to pave the way for a myriad of legal and cultural changes, including marriage equality, which New Hampshire enacted into law in 2009 (and reaffirmed in 2012, by soundly rejecting an effort for repeal).

In New Hampshire, with our traditions of individualism, respect for others and the constitutional right to privacy, Pride Month should be a time when we reaffirm all state policies that protect our citizens from discrimination. In 2019, the New Hampshire law against discrimination based on gender identity was expanded to include health insurance, residential care, mental health services and sentencing of hate crimes to make it clear that LGBTQ individuals were covered in those areas as well.

August 16, 2019, was a great day for the state of New Hampshire, when Gov. Chris Sununu signed House Bill 608 into law. In addition to HB 608, the governor signed another bill in 2019 that expanded nondiscrimination protections to public schools.

That bill was Senate Bill 263, which would be rolled back by this year’s sports ban, House Bill 1205, now on its way to the governor’s desk.

Pride Month is a good time to re-affirm the 2019 laws, not negate or dilute them with passage of any of the anti-LGBTQ bills that are now headed to the governor. Hundreds of letters and op-eds opposing these bills have been published in the media and online, presented as testimony and shared with policymakers over the past year. The amount of outcry against these anti-LGBTQ bills — from parents and children, businesses, churches, health care and mental health providers, educators and others — far exceeds the supposed citizen appeals that some lawmakers invoke as their reason for supporting them. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric telling you otherwise.

As has been pointed out before, these anti-LGBTQ proposals are not home grown; they are not New Hampshire-inspired bills to address a New Hampshire-specific problem. Rather, they are part of a national special interest campaign to enact laws targeting LGBTQ youth in all 50 states.

It’s almost as if the failure to repeal marriage equality has led extremist groups to go out and find another group to go after. This time it’s LGBTQ youth. The passage of any one of the bills now on their way to Gov. Sununu will be harmful to LGBTQ kids, families, and whole communities who deserve to be accepted, not marginalized.

From the beginning, the community mental health centers have spoken out about the negative impacts of these bills, citing increased suicide rates and reporting of suicidal ideation among LGBTQ youth. Reports from The Council for State Governments and the CDC back up these findings and show that LGBTQ “youth in grades 7-12 are more than twice as likely to have suicide attempts as compared to heterosexual youth.”

The centers have also been clear that the reason for more suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among LGBTQ kids is because they are bullied and not accepted for who they are — not because they are LGBTQ. And we have emphasized that the misinformed discussion around these anti-LGBTQ bills has the very real potential to endanger the lives of some of the most vulnerable young people in our state. These proposals being part of the public discourse means that some individuals will feel emboldened to discriminate against and harass LGBTQ kids in the community, at school, on the sports field and on social media.

These bills are contrary to Pride Month and to everything New Hampshire stands for. The community mental health centers are standing up to oppose any movement that endangers the lives of children with unnecessary and cruel legislation that targets them for simply being who they are.

We are asking the governor to stand up as well, to reaffirm the position he took five years ago when he signed anti-discrimination laws, and to boldly use his veto pen when these bills reach his desk.

Patricia Carty is CEO of the Mental Health Center of Greater Manchester. She lives in Manchester.