New Hampshire’s elected transgender felon resigned today
As I wrote about in this post yesterday New Hampshire elected the first open transgender person to office in the November election. This was an historic moment for the GLBT community but unfortunately it became known that Stacie Laughton was in violation of state law and was ineligible to run for elected office.
It turns out that Stacie Laughton was a convicted felon who served 4 1/2 months in prison and the prison time made her ineligible to run for office.
And coupled with the fact that she was still on probation, so technically she was still serving her sentence, any doubt about her eligibility to run for state office was removed.
Amid growing criticism from both Republicans and Democrats in the state, and with the beginning stages of an investigation from the state Attorney General, Stacie Laughton consulted with the New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman and other party leaders along with her own attorney, who stated she didn’t really have a defense. After exhausting all options she did the right thing and announced her resignation today.
America's Watchtower 
Transgender,huh? I am an old dinsaur, Steve. I have a hard enough time dealing with gays, but transgender; I’m sorry but I can’t think of them as anything approaching normal. I guess I will never be a modern man.
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Neither will I. It’s not my concern if someone wants to be gay or confused, but I don’t see them as normal. I don’t understand this ‘popularity’ trend with the liberals, it seems to be all the craze these days to have gays, and now transgender-ed to run for public office. I don’t see this as a promotion of society in an way. I want the best person for the job in office. I doubt that someone that doesn’t know who they are will ever be that person, nor would I trust their agenda.
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Personally while I might not understand the transgender community and while I might not agree with the lifestyle I consider myself to be a social libertarian who doesn’t believe I have the right to tell others how to live their lives, just as I would not want them to tell me how to live mine. That is where I stand on this issue, if a gay person was running for office who agreed with me on the majority of the issues I wouldn’t have a problem voting for he or she.
This leads me to something interesting which happened in Massachusetts in the recent election.
Richard Tisea was a republican who took on the Democrat incumbent, John Tierney. Tierney’s family ran an illegal gambling ring and his wife is now in jail because of it. She refused to testify against her husband who knew where he was getting all this illegal money from. The Republican, Tisea, just happens to be a gay man who holds social views which most Massachusetts voters agree with yet the voters chose the Democrat over the gay Republican and there have been legitimate accusations of voter fraud yet nobody in the gay community is standing up for Tisea–proving that in the end party trumps actual policy.
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I don’t know that I totally agree with you on this one Steve. I don’t mean to sound like I’m making a blanket statement, however I’ve witnessed this in action, where someone from a specific community is elected that has ties, and an agenda that goes along with these ties. Here in Arizona, I’m sure everyone knows we have a massive problem with illegals, and I’ll tell you right now, I’m NOT PC. If it looks like a duck quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, I’m calling it a duck. To hell with the ‘immigration’ problem, our issue is with Mexicans that are here illegally. So when someone from the Mexican community runs for office, I get worried, in that I believe that this person is not going to do what’s best for “the people”, ie: everyone, but rather focus on what’s best for Mexicans legal or otherwise. And we had a classic example of this when Arizona enacted SB1070, the law that was enacted to help remove the illegals from this state. (estimated 400,000) during this time. A senator in Tucson (southern Arizona heavily laden with illegal Mexicans), Raul Grijalva, called for the boycotting of Arizona, his own freekin state in protest of this bill.. And it happened. Arizona suffered for about 6-8 months as many conventions were cancelled, concerts, developers, etc etc. This bill had nothing to do whatsoever with those living here legally. Just those that were here illegally. It was called a racist law, which never made any sense, as fighting to rid our state of illegal Mexicans is not racist in any way. So when it comes to specific groups, such as gays, or now transgendered, I worry. I don’t believe for a moment that there isn’t intentions to create laws, or oppose laws that would be devised, solely to propagate their own. And I don’t agree with that for a second.
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I agree. Our son in law just came out… 18 years of marriage and two children later… New Hampshire.. what a state.
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Well, since she technically hadn’t even completed serving her term, she was on the face of it ineligible to run and ineligible to hold office. NOW, if there are any penalties for her having run, she should be faced with them (f’rinstance, if she signed an oath that she was qualified to hold the office, she perjured herself . . .)
Take good care, and may God bless us all!
TGY
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She hadn’t even started serving her term yet but she was definitely ineligible to run in the first place, you were right though when you said this should have been found before she was ever elected, it is inexcusable that she made it this far. I don’t know if she had to sign anything prior to running but I have to believe she did and this would probably be a parole violation considering she was convicted of credit card fraud.
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Well, today the issue gets more cloudy than it appeared yesterday because it seems that nobody really knows what the law is at this point. The Union Leader (I know your feeling about this paper 🙂 ) is reporting that she finished probation but that part of her sentence was suspended pending 10 years of good behavior and nobody knows for sure if these means she was ineligible.
Also she didn’t have to sign any paperwork about felonies so she didn’t violate any laws there, the only thing we know at this point is that this should have been dealt with way before this time.
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