| Governor Sununu Signs Pro Sexual Harassment Bill into Law |
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| Earlier this year, the New Hampshire House and Senate voted to pass HB 315, a bill that will put the safety of women throughout the state at risk. Yesterday, Governor Sununu signed that bill into law. Sadly, now that HB 315 is signed into law, a woman on trial for murder will no longer be able to argue that she was provoked by a man’s unwanted and aggressive sexual advances. Predatory sexual harassment will only constitute provocation if it is “forcible”—meaning the man actually lays hands on the woman. Under current law, a woman on trial for murder could point to a man’s egregious and frightening sexual advances to at least mitigate her culpability, even if these advances were not physically forcible. Now, however, this argument is illegal unless the man actually used physical force as part of his sexual advance. Proponents of the law argue that it will only be applied to straight men who kill gay men for sexually propositioning them. Yet nothing in law’s text says this. On the contrary, the law creates a new, general protection for unwanted “sexual advances.” The vast majority of sexual advances are directed towards women and girls, not straight men. The imaginary scenario behind this law—a hateful straight men executing a gay man for propositioning him—has never actually occurred in New Hampshire. This means that New Hampshire legislators and governor have just chosen to place the safety of women and girls in jeopardy solely to engage in pointless virtue-signaling and groveling to the cultural left. We think they will come to see that their actions have pleased neither the cultural left—whose hatred is never truly sated by these kinds of pitiful gestures from Republicans—nor the women and girls whose safety they have sacrificed. |
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