Unapologetic
Democrat Jonah Wheeler stood alone before a capacity crowd in the Peterborough Town Hall as critics, leaders in his own party, and even some childhood friends railed against the 22-year-old state representative’s vote for legislation deemed “transphobic” by progressive activists.
Wheeler (D-Peterborough) was unapologetic during Tuesday night’s question and answer session sponsored by the Peterborough League of Women Voters as he explained why he broke with his party and voted for HB 148. The bill protects the right of local institutions to keep biological males out of women’s locker rooms and bathrooms.
“Nobody should be discriminated against because of who they are,” Wheeler said. “We can respect trans women, and we can respect the rights of women who object to having trans women in their spaces.”
“You can do whatever you feel like, but your rights end when the rights of another begin. Government is about the balance of rights,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler explained that some biological women had approached him asking that he protect their spaces. “What was I supposed to do — ignore these women?” Several people in the crowd said, “Yes! Yes!”
Well thanks a lot, massively progressive people of Peterborough New Hampshire. Men who say they are women matter and women don’t. Men get whatever they demand and women just have to lump it. What a Utopia you are creating.
New Hampshire Democrats have repeatedly and publicly accused Wheeler, who is Black, of supporting “Jim Crow” policies by supporting women’s-only spaces.
Wow, that’s nice.
HB 148 does not impose a blanket ban on transgender people, but allows local institutions and local sports authorities to set their own policies they deem appropriate. Wheeler refuses to consider the women who spoke to him in favor of the bill as somehow bigoted or transphobic.
…
Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill, the lone Democrat on the council, stood up to condemn Wheeler’s vote, saying the bill is part of the “racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic” Project 2025 movement pushed by Republican President Donald Trump.
But voting to let men use women’s spaces is itself misogynistic, to put it mildly.
“I’m very sad to think New Hampshire is rolling back civil rights protections for Granite Staters,” Liot Hill said.
But what about civil rights protections for Granite State women?
Dan Grosz with the Peterborough Democratic Executive Committee read a statement on behalf of the party condemning Wheeler and Leishman’s vote.
“We must express our deep concern and disapproval over your recent voting records,” Grosz read. “While we respect your right to vote your conscience, our conscience compels us to publicly voice our opposition to your actions.”
What a filthy pack of bullies. Honestly. All this fervor on behalf of a tiny number of men who like to pretend to be women.
Should be ‘regressive cultists’, but I suppose that’s too much to ask of a news outlet.
22-year-old breaks with his party of trans nonsense. I’m very impressed with this guy! Unexpected.
That is right on the money. All this trans bullshit has been generated by an extreme minority capable of generating one helluva lot of noise.
Politics has ever been about standing up for something. So this 22-year-old clearly has a big future.
If this is the Democratic Party…will
we be surprised if Vance is elected in 28?
I said a few months back that ‘trans rights’ was going to become a litmus test * – and so it has come to pass. Neither political side are even remotely prepared to listen or consider. There is no longer any capacity for nuance, appropriate middle grounds, or compassion. The losers are confused and sometimes unwell children, homosexuals, and women who understand reality. Maga will do everything they can to hurt trans people and their families and supporters, and extend that hurt to gay people as well. As soon as the political pendulum swings (and it eventually will), the ‘trans women are women’ crowd will be demanding absolute obedience to their edicts, regardless of who’s hurt. Political moderates prepared to create space for sensible discussion are like hen’s teeth.
* Not that that was any harder than shooting fish in a barrel.
@Brian #4:
Not if the economy and quality of life is in shambles. People will put up with stupid nonsense that mostly doesn’t affect them when times feel good. But since they didn’t and there was nostalgia for a pre-Covid
economy, well, here we are.
I say this because I only had encounter the trans every few weeks or months even out here. Portland would be a different story.
Jonah Wheeler is a mensch. And how do other folks in the Democratic party not get it? How can they say, with a straight face, that if you don’t let these hulking blokes prance their peckers about the ladies’ locker room that you’re being misogynistic? By far the most misogynistic thing to happen in recent years is forcing women to keep their mouths shut about this invasion of their privacy. It’s rape culture with training wheels.
Which, of course, is something Donald can’t give them. He botched COVID badly, now he’ll botch returning the economy to what it was…if he’s even trying. Removing regulations and regulators is not going to save the economy. It might increase availability of certain cheap items, but how many of us really want our water or our eggs to kill us? The pre-COVID economy was an economy of regulated business, with liability for negligence (not that it was easy to get that liability assigned, but enough companies followed that it makes it uncomfortable for those who don’t).
Not so sure there are any training wheels; more like camouflage. It’s rape culture in a postmodern bustier.
BKSA@#6: my impression, though I am childless myself, is that the electorate at large is most inclined to tolerate well-explained, though painful, management of economic crisis if they, as parents, are confident that state education is doing a good job at serving their children’s potential and their (the parent’s) ambition for them. If an incumbent government can offer people hope for neither their own immediate future nor their children’s future, then it will not find any scope for even a hair’s breadth escape, come polling day. Perhaps that is good reason for localisation of education policy as practiced by the USA and Federal Republic of Germany, rather than the centralization of France and England (and – more recently – Scotland).
You know, Alan Peakall, that is interesting, and I suspect correct. One of the things I always find interesting about that, though, is that people in the US usually report high levels of trust and confidence in their child’s teacher (who they almost certainly know) and a low level of trust and confidence in the rest of the nation’s teachers (the faceless ones that teach other people’s kids).