IT’S BEEN five years since Gov. Chris Sununu infamously signed HB 1319 and HB 587 into law, emphasizing “gender identity” over biological sex and tying the hands of therapists in helping children fully explore their feelings of gender confusion.
We fervently warned against the potential consequences of such legislation, pointing out that our schools could become privacy battlegrounds as biological males invaded intimate areas based solely on their claims to be female. We could see the erosion of parental and child rights in the face of a single government-directed therapy approach for children suffering from gender dysphoria or just experiencing normal childhood exploration and curiosity.
At the time, supporters of these bills accused us of overreacting and being “anti-LGBTQIA+” — though, to be precise, the term was just “LGBTQ” at the time. Ridiculing the prospect of the chaos and damage we predicted, they celebrated that New Hampshire was moving into a more enlightened state, where all could independently enjoy “equal opportunity and freedom from discrimination.”
In the wake of the governor’s actions, we hoped we were wrong. But we were not. Fast forward five years — welcome to the state of discrimination, confusion, and unequal rights.
After Sununu signed the two new laws, school boards quickly enacted sweeping transgender-inclusion policies, typically following a model provided by a national organization whose “policy work strives to dismantle all identity-based oppressions.”
Such policies have ignored the privacy and sports fairness concerns of biological females and were often put in place on the basis of misleading legal advice that, contrary to the actual law, claimed schools have no choice in how they handle transgender student access to facilities and programs.
When we warned about the threat posed to biological women in women’s sports, we were told “This doesn’t happen in New Hampshire.” It is happening.
Recently, a freshman biological male who started competing in track and field this year won the 1,600 meter and high jump at a statewide meet, ensuring his team’s championship trophy. He went on to place second in the girls 1,600m at the NHIAA Div. III Championships, relegating two formerly dominant senior women to third and fourth.
Somehow, through this, schools have managed to almost completely supplant parental authority by making teachers and administrators de facto custodians, ones who deliberately lie to parents about what is happening with their children.
That public schools have become an echo chamber of transgender ideology is not without consequences. The number of students self-identifying as transgender is exploding, rising 70% nationally from 2020 to 2021 alone. And we cannot ignore the statistics that show strong correlation between “sudden onset” of a proclaimed transgender identity with peer influence. We are also seeing a rising number of “detransitioners” such as Chloe Cole and Katie Lennon, who have shared their cautionary tales of social and peer pressure leading to irreversible medical decisions.
Those holding religious or scientific views that still acknowledge biological differences between the sexes, these laws and those who interpret them have not been kind. Parents’ rights have been severely curtailed, such as the right to know what is happening with their child on school grounds, students are being unfairly disciplined, and young women who don’t want to share their locker rooms or bathrooms with someone of the opposite sex are ignored.
In all this chaos and confusion, we don’t hear simple truths such as the fact that studies have shown that the vast majority of children will outgrow feelings of gender dysphoria by adolescence. Or that much of liberal Europe is abandoning medical interventions for children with gender dysphoria.
It doesn’t help that Gov. Sununu’s Department of Justice is a strong supporter of this brave new world. So, what now? While we can’t turn back the clock, we can arm ourselves with the truth and push back on our far left DOJ and school boards.
We must support the rights of parents to be informed and for children to have access to compassionate counseling without a preconceived social agenda. We must be alert to pending legislation that will either help or hurt our families and children.
Sadly, the latest effort to bolster parental rights, SB 272, recently failed in the House. The next time an opportunity comes to undo some of this damage, our voices must be heard in numbers and strength too powerful to ignore.
Cornerstone Action Executive Director Shannon McGinley lives in Bedford.
