The US Trans Caucus Meets!

Back on May 9, the US Trans Caucus got together via Zoom to discuss the changing landscape of American politics.

The US Trans Caucus is comprised of Minneapolis city councilmembers Andrea Jenkins and Philippe Cunningham, and state Reps Brianna Titone of Colorado, Reps Gerri Cannon and Lisa bunker of new Hampshire and Del Danica Roem of VA 

Here's the video of that historic meeting of out trans legislators moderated by Councilmember Jenkins.. 

NH Senate Gets It Right This Time, Passes Trans Rights Bill

So how long will my transgender brothers and sisters in the Granite State have to wait for their legislators to pass laws that allow them to 'live free or die'? 

And will you find the courage to do so?
TransGriot, May 4, 2009

Nine years ago I was justifiably going nuclear and putting the then Democratically controlled New Hampshire Senate on blast on my birthday after the all female led body voted 24-0 to kill a trans rights bill that narrowly passed the female led Democratically controlled New Hampshire House by one vote.

That vote, gallingly after they had no problem passing a marriage equality bill, kept New Hampshire  as the only state in the New England region that didn't have discrimination protections for its transgender citizens

The political script has flipped in New Hampshire since then.  Instead of the Democrats controlling all three branches of government, it's now the Republicans.   The NH Senate now has a 14-10 GOP edge versus the 14-10 edge the other way at the time.  The NH House is 226-174 GOP instead of the 225-175 Democratic edge it had in 2009.

HB 1319 is a bill that would update New Hampshire's non discrimination law and prohibit discrimination against my Granite State trans family in employment, housing and public accommodations. 

The House passed HB 1319 in a bipartisan fashion 195-129 back on March 7 after three emotional public hearings with a combined twelve hours of testimony from many trans New Hampshire residents that went into the wee hours of the morning. 

Today the New Hampshire Senate righted a nearly decade old wrong.by passing HB 1319 with bipartisan support 14-10.

The bill now heads to Gov. Chris Sununu's (R) desk, where he is expected to sign it into law. 

Once he does, New Hampshire will become the 20th state along with the District of Columbia to legislatively protect its transgender citizens.

And this day has been one trans Granite Staters have been waiting on for a long time.

TransGriot Perv Watch- The Case Of The GOP Legislative Ammosexual

In my latest episode of Perv Watch, we go to New Hampshire for the latest case of a predator endangering the safety of our children and they aren't transgender or dressed in femme attire.

According to RawStory and the New Hampshire Union Leader, 30 year old state rep Kyle Tasker (R) was busted for using the Net in an attempt to lure a 14 year old girl into having sex with him.

Rep. Tasker is in his third term, and serves in the New Hampshire Legislature on the House Committee on Children and Family Law that deals with the legal rights and protections for families and children.  He was alleged to have on January 20 sexually harassed an underage girl, and an agent with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force posed as a 14 year girl and set up a meeting via Facebook Messenger with him.  

When they arrived at that location in Nottingham, they found him with a loaded weapon.  Execution of a search warrant at Tasker's Nottingham home led to the discovery of an enormous quantity of controlled substances and several more weapons strategically placed throughout the home.

Tasker was arrested and charged with four felonies and is being held on $250,000 bail.  In addition to his current legal problems, he also dropped a gun on the House floor in 2012 that fortunately didn't discharge.  

Tasker also caught flak in 2014 for mocking sexual assault victims amongst other problematic statements.

New Hampshire Republican Party Chair Jennifer Horn and NH House Speaker Shawn Jasper have called for his immediate resignation.   He was immediately removed by Jasper from his committee assignment.

We'll see what happens in this latest case in the TransGriot Perv Watch files, but once again it drives home the point that transpeople aren't the perverts we've been slandered and falsely accused of being, it's the cisgender males leveling the accusations you must pay attention to..  

Sanders Wins NH Primary In Blowout

I expected this to happen, and it did in terms of Bernie Sanders getting a big win in the New Hampshire primary.

With 89% of the ballots counted, Sanders has 60,0% of the vote to Clinton's 38.4% and the withdrawn Martin O'Malley's 0.2%. Sanders also made some history tonight by being the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential election primary contest and picked up 13 delegates to 9 for Clinton.

Since Bernie people like to try to make comparisons to 2008, remember the second place finisher in the New Hampshire Democratic side went on to win the nomination.

But Sanders realizes that this 2016 contest is not even close to being over, and the race now moves from two states with overwhelmingly white populations in Iowa and New Hampshire and favorable turf for him to more diverse primary states in Nevada (26% Latinx population) and South Carolina (27% African-American population) who so far are not 'Feeling The Bern' like white millennials are.

And Black voters, who are the base of the party, aren't Feeling the Bern' for many reasons, including the major one that he called for a primary challenge of President Obama back in 2012.

These next two contests on February 20 in Nevada and February 27 in South Carolina are must wins for Bernie to prove that he actually can get non-white Democratic support with the March 1 Super Tuesday contests looming.

We'll see how those contests play out over the rest of this month.



 

An Ugly NH GOP Blog Post

More evidence that the Republican War On Women is alive and well comes from New Hampshire.

Seems as though New Hampshire state legislator Steve Vallancourt decided to write a misogynist post for the NH Insider blog that disparaged Congresswoman Ann Kuster (D)  as 'ugly as sin' and took it another reprehensible step forward by stating that drag queens were more attractive.

'Annie Kuster looks more like a drag queen than most men in drag.'

If Vallancourt's name sounds vaguely familiar to you, back in 2012 he had to apologize for yelling "Sieg Heil!" and doing a Nazi salute on the NH house floor after debate was stopped by the Republican Speaker of the House on a voter Suppression ID bill.

Vallancourt's post was intended to support the US House candidacy of New Hampshire state rep Marilinda Garcia, bur she quickly put out a statement yesterday distancing herself from the ugly blog remarks.

"State Rep. Vaillancourt’s recent comments about Rep. Ann Kuster are sexist and have absolutely no place in political discourse. Both Rep. Kuster and I have experienced this unfortunate reality of being a woman in politics. I hope that as time moves forward and more female candidates run for political office around the country, people will focus on the content of our ideas rather than what we wear and how we look."

And I know this conservafool isn't trying to go there and talk about how people look when he ain't all that himself.  But then again it's a concrete example of the misogyny running rampant in the Republican Party and the conservative movement boys club in general.

It'll be up to the residents of New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District to decide which woman  will represent them.   I suspect their November 4 decision on who will be their congressmember will be based more on qualifications and what they can do for the district

And speaking of what you can do for your district Steve Vallancourt, how about you have several seats and a nice tall mug of shut the hell up?.

All Hail King Ray!

The 2013-14 school year is poised to be a great one for trans students.  

First we had the first ever out trans homecoming queen in California's Cassidy Campbell.  Now we turn our attention to Concord, NH and say hello to a trans homecoming king.

Congratulations to 17 year old Ray Ramsey, who was elected homecoming king at Concord High School 

Ramsey is the first trans student in the history of the school to be bestowed with that honor, and according to senior class adviser Lisa Lamb, the popular senior was elected in a landslide. 

And what a wonderful moment for the trans community to have a trans homecoming king and queen in the same academic year.

Stacie Laughton Resigns From NH Legislature Seat

Was happy to hear the news that transwoman Stacie Laughton had won a seat in the New Hampshire legislature during the just concluded 2012 election.

But unfortunately the news of Laughton's history making achievement went south as word leaked out about her pre-transition criminal record that included a felony conviction and serving 4.5 months for credit card fraud in 2008.

She's had a clean record since moving to Nashua and New Hampshire law allows convicted felons to vote and run for office after the final discharge of their sentence, which includes probation, imprisonment and parole.  Laughton's case included complications such as a suspended sentence and unpaid restitution, so there was a question about whether she could legally serve in the legislature.. 

With the Democrats just returning to the majority in the New Hampshire House, there was also pressure building on Laughton to resolve this controversy as quickly as possible.

On November 28 Representative-elect Laughton decided to submit her letter of resignation to the New Hampshire Secretary of State's Office. 

"I regret to inform you that I am unable to fill the State Representative seat for Hillsborough County District 31 to which I was recently elected."

The New Hampshire trans community and your brothers and sisters across the country regret that as well, especially since the state of New Hampshire doesn't have legislation covering the human rights of transpeople .  
It would have been nice to have one of our own #girlslikeus helping to make that happen..   

The sad conclusion of the Laughton case also reemphasizes something that is vitally important as we continue to make our trans human rights push, strive to break barriers, and have more transpeople run for and hopefully win public office. 

If you're going to run for public office as a transperson, make certain you don't have any skeletons that will pop out during the campaign or take the time to divulge them yourself.  If you don't, our opponents and haters will definitely be looking for them and if they find them, the haters will not hesitate to use them to not only keep us from winning the office, but attempt to disqualify us or cripple our effectiveness in that office if we win. 
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Stacie Laughton-New Hampshire Trans State Rep!

When the New Hampshire state legislature begins its session on January it will be only two seats shy of flipping control of the Senate back into Democratic hands at 13-11.   The 400 member New Hampshire House will have a 221 member Democratic majority under the leadership of Terrie Norelli as Speaker of the House.

The Democratic majority will also contain the first open trans person ever elected to a US state legislature. 

On Tuesday Democrat Stacie Laughton easily beat out two Republican candidates in the Ward 4 state legislative race in Nashua to become New Hampshire's first trans state representative.

In addition to being the first ever open trans legislator elected to a US state legislative seat, she also becomes the first elected trans state legislator since Althea Garrison accomplished that feat in neighboring Massachusetts 20 years ago

“I believe that at this point, the LGBT community will hopefully be inspired,” Laughton said Wednesday. “My hope is that now maybe we’ll see more people in the community running, maybe for alderman. Maybe in the next election, we’ll have a senator.”

Laughton said in an interview she also would like to work on legislation to make it easier for trans people to be recognized in the state, including measures that would make it easier for group members to change their gender on state-issued IDs and being able to use the restroom of their choice.

“The state needs to be welcoming and affirming and sending that message that we will be welcoming and you won’t be discriminated against in New Hampshire.” .

I sure hope so Rep-Elect Laughton, especially in light of the fact that just three years ago a trans rights bill was voted down 24-0 in a then Democratically controlled predominately female New Hampshire Senate after it passed by one vote in the New Hampshire House.   It was galling in light of the fact they had no problem passing a same gender marriage bill in the same session.  

Hopefully Rep-Elect Stacie Laughton can help change that.