By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome

Before the turn of the Century and even a little into this one New Hampshire’s motto was the same as it is today, Live Free or Die, but a slight tweak would better describe Granite Staters’ prevailing attitude as Live and Let Live.

Your business was your business and my business was my business, and “never the twain shall meet.”

The Laissez-faire attitude prevailed as people were reluctant to delve too deeply into their neighbors’ activities unless the cows broke out too many times and trampled the vegetable garden.

For years, New Hampshire had literally no restrictions on abortion services as most folks believed that was between a woman, her doctor and her partner. There was no room for government in the triad.

And for years, the legislature killed bills that put restrictions on abortion services until parental notification was passed first in the 2011 session only to be found unconstitutional and then passed with the needed changes in 2013.

The first abortion ban did not occur until the 2021 session when abortion became illegal after the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.

In the old days, not everyone was a heterosexual as same sex couples lived together and went about their business without their neighbors or other town folk batting an eye.

You could say the state had a libertarian attitude with everyone free to live life as he or she pleased as long as the parties were not too loud and did not go all night long when neighbors were nearby.

There were lots of little communes throughout the state that practiced “counterculture” and eastern religions.

Baba Ram Das, famous for being LSD guru Timothy Leary’s Harvard co-conspirator, lived in Franklin at his parents’ vacation home on Webster Lake and could be found walking the aisles of the local grocery store dressed in Indian garb with several disciples in tow. 

He may have been an oddity in Franklin, but he wasn’t harassed or threatened.

There were downsides to the Laissez-faire lifestyle such as domestic violence and drunk driving. You could rightly argue those were things that needed to change with too many people dying in car crashes and too many women and children needing physical and mental intervention to overcome the scars that most people did not want to talk about.

Without the strong arm of the law, people had to look out for each other and when situations crossed the danger line, police and health care professionals were available to intervene.

People could disagree without being disagreeable and they often did over morning coffee at the post office or local eatery.

But if you moved to New Hampshire today, you would never know what the state was like 40 years ago.

The state has gradually changed and ironically you can almost pinpoint the beginning to the arrival of the “libertarians” of the Free State Project and true to their word quickly involved themselves in government on many levels from the State House to the local school and planning boards.

Areas that were once off limits such as the patient-physician relationships or public education or local control are now under attack with the “libertarians” leading the charge.

Government that is closest to the people has the most direct impact on an individual.

So local selectmen, and school, planning and zoning boards mostly reflect the wishes of the community’s citizens.

They are also by far the most accountable to the citizens because if a local official continually bucks the wishes of the townspeople, he or she is not going to be in office very long.

That is the beauty of local control which recognizes that Seabrook has vastly different issues and character than Colebrook from the sea to the forest, and Portsmouth is nothing like Berlin or Lebanon and the local ordinances and regulations will reflect those differences.

Today New Hampshire has a housing crisis and has had one for many years, but until recently with escalating prices and few houses on the market, and with any available property bought up and turned into short-term rentals, it has reached a critical stage.

The answer for this legislature — driven by the “libertarian agenda” — is to restrict zoning and planning regulations statewide with a one-size-fits all approach these very same people rail against when it comes to things like raising the minimum wage.

The last two terms, the Republican/Libertarian majority in the Legislature wants to prevent the cities and towns in the state from implementing their zoning and planning regulations governing such things as parking requirements and setbacks. 

They do it in the name of property rights, but property rights are a two-way street as one person’s high-return, short-term rentals reduce the value of nearby property.

Several years ago, the libertarians began reaching all the way into the state’s classrooms first passing the divisive concepts law inspired by an executive order by then outgoing president Donald Trump in the state budget when it could not pass muster as a stand-alone bill.

The push was on to require more and more regulations and paperwork on public education while forcing school districts to broaden outside school contracts to include religious schools although the state constitution still says in Article 2 of the Bill of Rights “no person shall ever be compelled to pay towards the support of the schools of any sect or denomination.”

That is not the Blaine amendment which the US Supreme Court overruled in its decisions on public money going to religious schools.

Now the libertarians want to limit the amount of money you can spend on public education with a statewide spending cap while they suck the Education Trust Fund dry giving $6,000 to $7,000 subsidies to wealthy families with kids already in private and religious schools through the Education Freedom Account program.

That’s a nice skiing vacation in the Rockies for the family or a trip to Europe at taxpayers’ expense.

Last year the same group shepherded through a bill that allowed school district petition articles to cap spending at per-pupil rates.

When all but one or two failed miserably at school district meetings the libertarians introduced a statewide cap on school district budgets at the rate of inflation over the last five years or rate of student growth.

That certainly does not look anything like the once sacred local control and a lot more like father knows best, with most of the proponents of this kind of legislation older white men.

But the gravest example of the intrusion into people’s lives is health care and the damage being done to children and their parents.

For the past two or three years, following the national playbook, legislation has been introduced to preserve “parental rights” all of which are in law now except for the provision that turns educators into obligated surveillance agents for parents.

The House and Senate have passed similar parental rights bills this year so it is likely to pass and Gov. Kelly Ayotte will have to decide what to do with it. Former Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed one several years ago.

But after last week’s session, it appears parental rights do not apply to parents of children who suffer from gender dysphoria as the House voted to prohibit medical professionals from giving hormone treatments and puberty blockers to minors to treat the aliment as well as limiting breast surgery for minors.

When the House was about to debate House Bill 377 which would make it a class b felony for a physician to give hormone treatments or puberty blockers to minors, a Republican tried to  eliminate debate on the bill and go directly to a vote on it, but the attempt to silence those wishing to speak in favor failed and a series of speakers were able to tell of their friends and family who would be impacted by the prohibition.

Through the representatives many mothers of transgender children expressed their shock at the actions of the state legislature and the bills it passed affecting their children and some saying they have left New Hampshire and others said they plan to find a more tolerant and medically and physically safe environment.

When those opposing the bill spoke, who were mostly transgender members of the House, many Republicans left their seats in Representatives Hall and left the room.

But they returned to approve the bill seemingly unaware of their hypocrisy.

Until the past few years hormone therapy and puberty blockers were not an issue on anyone’s mind except those directly affected.

The phase that follows the Article 2 prohibition of using taxpayer money for religious education, is also telling. It reads “And every person, denomination or sect shall be equally under the protection of the law; and no subordination of any one sect, denomination or persuasion to another shall ever be established.”

But that is what is happening now, a group of Republican lawmakers want the rest of the state to be subordinate to their faux religious beliefs and ideologies.

That doesn’t feel like freedom or liberty if you do not agree with about 80 to 90 Republican libertarian lawmakers bankrolled by oligarchs and following their culture war playbook.

These freedom-loving free staters don’t love freedom and liberty, they love greed, intolerance and self-indulgence and they want to tell you as a parent, or teacher or local official to toe the line and if you don’t like it move out of state.

That feels more like tyranny and authoritarianism than freedom.

And that is a huge change for New Hampshire in a short period of time.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.