New Hampshire state Rep. Nancy Elliot (R) of Merrimack begins her tirade against the GLBT community by saying that she doesn't understand anal sex between two men, showing her disgust visibly on her face; ignorantly implying that anal sex is exclusive to the gay community:
"We heard in the hearing one of the people who came to testify, and they said that this was not normal, and I had to think about that for a while, you know, what are we talking about, and I started thinking, and we're talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it into the rectum of another man and wiggling it around in excrement, and I have to think, I'm not sure, would I allow that to be done to me? All of us... (inaudible for a split second) would you let that happen to you? Is that normal? Is that something, umm, that we want to portray as the same as the one flesh union between a man and a woman? I don't know, umm, then I start to think I remember when we were having the testimony people were saying that, umm, it was brought up that this would be brought into the schools and we were told 'oh no-no, that won't happen',"
She then claims that a parent called her; here's what she said:
"I heard yesterday from the mother of a fifth grader that they were given as part of their classroom instruction naked pictures of two men showing a presentation of anal sex."
She is at this point interrupted and told to keep her comments relative to the bill at hand; one meant to strip the newly obtained equality in marriage, but she insists:
"This is directly about the bill, because we now have made a marriage of same sex they are now teaching it in the public schools. They are showing our fifth graders how they can perform this kind of sex, and they are condoning, they are saying this is normal and this is something that you may want to try. This is the context of the lesson, this is something that you as a fifth grader may want to try. I see it as a real problem in our society, I see it as an affront to our citizens that their children are subjected to this, so I think it is important that we revisit what we did. We made a mistake and we should repeal it."
For the rest of the meeting you should watch the YouTube video above, but I warn you the ignorance doesn't end with her.In a surprising turn Alderman Diane Sheehan called out Elliot's wild story and gave her 48 hours to either give the name of the parent who supplied this erroneous information against the Nashua school systems to the police, or offer an apology for giving a false statement.
"If neither of those two actions take place in the next 48 hours, I will begin exploring action to prosecute for false statement, and your removal from office," Sheehan wrote.
Rep. Elliot has chosen to give a "cover her own ass" statement that offers no apology for the inaccuracy of her statement, leaving me to wonder if she didn't fabricate it all on her own. If her story were true and someone had contacted her she shirked her responsibility to confirm this information before serving it to her peers as fact. From the Nashua Telegraph:
“I would like to apologize to the Judiciary Committee, the Nashua public schools and its employees and the speaker as well as anyone else affected by what I said,’’ Elliott said, reading from a prepared statement at the beginning of a House Judiciary Committee meeting. “I will try much harder in the future to verify fully my statement.”
Despite the apology, Elliott maintained she believed what she said was true at the time.
Many thanks should go to Alderman Sheehan, not for being GLBT friendly, but for being fair. It's nice to see that at least SOME of the untruths are being called out and found out by the mainstream moderate middle. Is it enough, or is it too little too late? Are we as a community doing enough to stand up and protect ourselves from having our relationships reduced to a simple sex act in the eyes of the public?
Special thanks to Lurleen at Pam's House Blend for reporting on this story. Let's just hope that the good people of Merrimack decide to reward Rep. Elliot's actions with a civilian life.