Marriage,
"Bathroom" Bills Deadlocked in N.H.

A house panel in the New Hampshire legislature reached 10-10 votes on Wednesday on both a marriage-equality bill and a bill to ban discrimination against transgender people. The deadlock vote means that each bill will go straight to the full house for debate without a recommendation from the judiciary committee.

Opponents of the bill that would ban gender identity-based discrimination are calling it the "bathroom bill," as they argue that it would eradicate the need for gender-specific bathrooms.

Republican Nancy Elliott said that passage of the bill would enable predators and stalkers to easily walk into women's bathrooms and locker rooms, according to the Concord Monitor. "I ask you, Who's more vulnerable than women and children?" she said, going on to describe women's restrooms as refuges for breast-feeding or to have a moment to cry. "We've got women in there with their pants down, and there's men in there," she added.

Republican Robert Rowe said that the term "gender identity" is too loosely defined, giving leeway to men to simply walk into a "female changing room, or any bathroom."

Democrat Lucy Weber, however, took the debate out of the bathroom and discussed the broader terms of the bill, arguing that it can help people keep their jobs.

"We had testimony about people who had had stellar job reviews and job performance for years and years and years, and who, when they finally made the choice to act on their gender issues, had been fired," she said. "[Outcry against the bill gave] me a deep sympathy for the people who sought protection."

Most Democrats, with the notable exception of committee chair David Cote, supported the marriage-equality bill, which also ended in deadlock. After the vote, Cote said he would rather keep the civil-union policy that the state legislature passed in 2007.

In a heated debate, Republican William O'Brien said that allowing same-sex couples to marry would lead to a slippery slope.

"Why not brothers being part of marriage?" he said in the Monitor . "Why not animals and men being joined together in matrimony? Why would we discriminate against those who want to marry multiple members of the other sex?"

Elliott, who also opposed the marriage-equality bill, said that marriage was created by God and is cited in the Bible as being between a man and a woman. "If we think that we are any different than past civilizations that have been destroyed over this, then we deceive ourselves," she said.

Democrat Frances Potter, a former minister, countered that old traditions end for a reason.

"Marriage used to be a matter of inheritance in the Middle Ages, in order to join two pieces of land," she told the Monitor. "It used to be that a woman belonged to a man and that concubines were OK. And that certainly was OK in Bible times We pick and choose what we want to listen to from the Bible."