New Hampshire Republican congressional candidate Russell Prescott has lengthy advocated towards marriage rights for same-sex {couples} and as soon as criticized a political opponent for believing “avowed homosexuals” needs to be allowed to grow to be adoptive or foster dad and mom, The Hill has realized.
Prescott, a former state senator and government councilor, is difficult Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) for one of many state’s two Home seats.
Over the course of a 20-year profession in state politics, Prescott, 63, routinely championed laws and rhetoric essential of homosexual rights and laced with dangerous stereotypes in regards to the LGBTQ group, in line with supplies obtained by The Hill.
Prescott, who served intermittently as a New Hampshire state senator between 2000 and 2016 and later represented the state’s third Govt Council district from 2017 to 2021, launched a second bid for the state’s 1st Congressional District in June after failing to clinch the Republican nomination for the seat in 2022. He gained a crowded Republican major in September and can face Pappas, who made historical past in 2018 as the primary overtly LGBTQ particular person elected to federal workplace from New Hampshire, on Nov. 5.
A mailer despatched to southern New Hampshire voters throughout Prescott’s first state Senate run in 2000 vilified his Republican major opponent, former state Sen. Rick Russman, for supporting a 1999 invoice permitting “the adoption of children by avowed homosexuals.”
In 2004, throughout his second state Senate time period, Prescott mounted a profitable effort solely to acknowledge out-of-state marriages that may be authorized in New Hampshire, which on the time excluded same-sex marriages. The invoice, launched in response to a state Supreme Court docket ruling in neighboring Massachusetts granting gays and lesbians the appropriate to marry within the state, made clear, in line with Prescott, “that New Hampshire law says we do not recognize marriage between a man and another man or between a woman and another woman.”
The laws, signed by former New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson (R), additionally established a fee to check the authorized and coverage implications of “extending some or all of the rights” of marriage to same-sex {couples}. Prescott was a member of the fee even after he left the legislature in 2004.
In a sequence of votes in 2005, the fee rejected a proposal to undertake civil unions within the state and urged New Hampshire lawmakers to forestall same-sex {couples} from marrying altogether, the Related Press reported on the time. It additionally resurrected a beforehand defeated proposal to permit homosexual {couples} and different home companions to register for reciprocal advantages — on the expense of joint adoption, guardianship or alimony funds in the event that they cut up up.
A report launched by the fee that 12 months concluded same-sex marriage was not a civil rights concern, rejecting makes an attempt by state LGBTQ rights advocates to attract comparisons between the struggle for homosexual marriage and the battle to legalize interracial unions a number of many years prior.
“Race unlike sexual orientation is … immutable and an innate characteristic and not something that is acquired and changeable,” the fee’s conservative majority wrote within the report. The absence of any point out of same-sex marriage in New Hampshire’s historical past additionally weakened proponents’ argument for it, they added, writing that “same sex marriage has never been considered either a fundamental right or an essential element of society’s fabric.”
Prescott reentered the state Legislature in 2010, defeating now-Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) for New Hampshire’s twenty third state Senate district. Whereas campaigning for reelection in 2012, Prescott mentioned he would vote to repeal same-sex marriage rights in New Hampshire throughout a Republican candidate discussion board in Exeter.
“I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and if that bill comes before me, that is the way that I will vote because that is part of my belief system,” he mentioned.
Later, in 2016, Prescott proposed an unsuccessful modification to a statewide ban on conversion remedy, a discredited follow that goals to vary an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identification, that may have exempted non secular counseling.
Greater than half of conversion remedy practitioners at the moment practising within the U.S. provide companies by non secular organizations, in line with a 2023 report produced by The Trevor Undertaking, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention group.
Prescott’s marketing campaign didn’t reply to The Hill’s request for touch upon the candidate’s document on LGBTQ rights and whether or not he would advocate for comparable insurance policies in Congress.
Prescott’s previous views on same-sex marriage and his work to limit it are public document however went beforehand unreported this election cycle, in addition to the final. The nonpartisan Prepare dinner Political Report charges the race for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, which Pappas gained in 2022 with 54 % of the vote, as “likely Democrat.” An election forecast mannequin from The Hill and Choice Desk HQ predicts Pappas has an 85 % probability of being reelected.
Similar-sex marriage rights within the U.S. are largely thought of safe beneath a 2015 Supreme Court docket choice and a 2022 legislation signed by President Biden, although LGBTQ rights teams have recommended the excessive courtroom’s conservative majority and the opportunity of a second Trump time period threaten these protections.
In July, members of the Republican Nationwide Committee voted to take away references to marriage as a union completely between “one man and one woman” from the occasion’s 2024 coverage platform. The brand new platform pledges to advertise “the sanctity of marriage,” language non secular figures and conservative lawmakers have lengthy used to ban same-sex marriage.
Within the closely Democratic Northeast, New Hampshire, whose Legislature and governor’s workplace are each managed by Republicans, stays the singular holdout in advancing sure LGBTQ rights and protections.
The state’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu in July signed laws barring transgender student-athletes from sports activities groups that match their gender identification and permitting dad and mom to decide their kids out of public faculty classes that contact on sexuality and gender identification or expression.
Additionally in July, New Hampshire grew to become the area’s first state to limit entry to transition-related care beneath a invoice signed by Sununu that bans gender-affirming surgical procedure for trans minors. That invoice, which handed the state Home and Senate with assist from Democrats, initially sought to ban all gender-affirming look after minors however was later amended to limit solely genital surgical procedures, which skilled organizations just like the World Skilled Affiliation for Transgender Well being and the Endocrine Society don’t suggest for people beneath 18.
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