Equality Magazine Winter 2011

marriage on the rocks in the granite state?

photo: Win McNamee / Getty

By Karin Quimby

A

ll eyes are on the Granite State. Proequality leaders in the New Hampshire legislature were swept out of office last November on a tide of economic fear, and the social conservatives who replaced them have vowed to repeal marriage equality, which is just a year old. If they are successful, it would be the first time a legislature will have been able to reverse marriage equality.

While the New Hampshire Republican leadership recently announced that repealing marriage equality is not an “immediate priority,” it remains on their agenda. There is immense pressure by right-wing members of the legislature and anti-gay groups to repeal the marriage equality law.

“The Human Rights Campaign is not sitting by, waiting for the freedom to marry to be stripped away this year or next,” said Marty Rouse, HRC’s national field director. Partnering with the statewide group, New Hampshire Freedom to Marry, HRC has built a robust campaign on the ground, that includes 8 full-time HRC staff, to remind Republican and Democratic legislators that taking away rights is not the New Hampshire way.

“While over 1,000 committed gay and lesbian couples have married this past year, the sky has

not fallen in New Hampshire,” said Rouse. “The dire predictions hollered from the anti-gay right haven’t materialized, of course.” Marriage equality has provided not only important protections for families but it is good for business, allowing employers to attract the very best employees in a state that doesn’t discriminate, he noted.

For several years, HRC has invested widely in the advancement of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in the state, providing field and communications expertise and mobilizing HRC members and supporters to contact their legislators and the governor. HRC was there in 2006 to help elect fair-minded legislators, in 2008 to pass civil unions and in 2009 to pass marriage equality.

With the LGBT community’s hard-won rights on the line, HRC is already mounting another vigorous campaign with local organizations.

“New Hampshire Freedom to Marry enjoys a very productive partnership with HRC that will result in retaining marriage equality here,” said Mo Buckley, the Concord-based organization’s executive director.

But our opponents are not resting, either. The so-called National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council will be invest-

ing significantly in the fight. “We are poised to start taking back territory where [marriage equality] was wrongly enacted in places like New Hampshire and Iowa. That will be the next battleground,” said NOM President Brian Brown. NOM claims it spent $1 million on TV ads targeting the re-election of Democratic Gov. John Lynch, who signed the equal marriage bill into law in 2009. FRC also invested in the last elections to put more anti-LGBT legislators in the statehouse, Tom McClusky, an FRC official, told the Concord Monitor in January. “We don’t want to see that go to waste.”

“Both groups want a New Hampshire win badly,” said Kevin Nix, director of NOM Exposed, a joint project between HRC and the Courage Campaign that exposes the rhetoric and ethics of NOM, the nation’s leading anti-gay organization.

With the 2012 presidential primary season already beckoning potential candidates to this first-in-the-nation primary state, there are national implications to this campaign, says Rouse.

“New Hampshire may be a small state, but the stakes are huge. We’re ready to make history here.”

Quimby is an HRC regional field director overseeing HRC’s work in the Granite State.

WWW.HRC.ORG

winter 2011

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