New Hampshire candidate has long opposed same-sex marriage rights
New Hampshire Republican congressional candidate Russell Prescott has long advocated against marriage rights for same-sex couples and once criticized a political opponent for believing “avowed homosexuals” should be allowed to become adoptive or foster parents, The Hill has learned.
Prescott, a former state senator and executive councilor, is challenging Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) for one of the state’s two House seats.
Over the course of a 20-year career in state politics, Prescott, 63, routinely championed legislation and rhetoric critical of gay rights and laced with harmful stereotypes about the LGBTQ community, according to materials obtained by The Hill.
Prescott, who served intermittently as a New Hampshire state senator between 2000 and 2016 and later represented the state’s third Executive Council district from 2017 to 2021, launched a second bid for the state’s 1st Congressional District in June after failing to clinch the Republican nomination for the seat in 2022. He won a crowded Republican primary in September and will face Pappas, who made history in 2018 as the first openly LGBTQ person elected to federal office from New Hampshire, on Nov. 5.
A mailer sent to southern New Hampshire voters during Prescott’s first state Senate run in 2000 vilified his Republican primary opponent, former state Sen. Rick Russman, for supporting a 1999 bill allowing “the adoption of children by avowed homosexuals.”
In 2004, during his second state Senate term, Prescott mounted a successful effort only to recognize out-of-state marriages that would be legal in New Hampshire, which at the time excluded same-sex marriages. The bill, introduced in response to a state Supreme Court ruling in neighboring Massachusetts granting gays and lesbians the right to marry in the state, made clear, according to Prescott, “that New Hampshire law says we do not recognize marriage between a man and another man or between a woman and another woman.”
The legislation, signed by former New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson (R), also established a commission to study the legal and policy implications of “extending some or all of the rights” of marriage to same-sex couples. Prescott was a member of the commission even after he left the legislature in 2004.
In a series of votes in 2005, the commission rejected a proposal to adopt civil unions in the state and urged New Hampshire lawmakers to prevent same-sex couples from marrying altogether, the Associated Press reported at the time. It also resurrected a previously defeated proposal to allow gay couples and other domestic partners to register for reciprocal benefits — at the expense of joint adoption, guardianship or alimony payments if they split up.
A report released by the commission that year concluded same-sex marriage was not a civil rights issue, rejecting attempts by state LGBTQ rights advocates to draw comparisons between the fight for gay marriage and the battle to legalize interracial unions several decades prior.
“Race unlike sexual orientation is … immutable and an innate characteristic and not something that is acquired and changeable,” the commission’s conservative majority wrote in the report. The absence of any mention of same-sex marriage in New Hampshire’s history also weakened proponents’ argument for it, they added, writing that “same sex marriage has never been considered either a fundamental right or an essential element of society’s fabric.”
Prescott reentered the state Legislature in 2010, defeating now-Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) for New Hampshire’s 23rd state Senate district. While campaigning for reelection in 2012, Prescott said he would vote to repeal same-sex marriage rights in New Hampshire during a Republican candidate forum in Exeter.
“I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and if that bill comes before me, that is the way that I will vote because that is part of my belief system,” he said.
Later, in 2016, Prescott proposed an unsuccessful amendment to a statewide ban on conversion therapy, a discredited practice that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, that would have exempted religious counseling.
More than half of conversion therapy practitioners currently practicing in the U.S. offer services through religious organizations, according to a 2023 report produced by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization.
Prescott’s campaign did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment on the candidate’s record on LGBTQ rights and whether he would advocate for similar policies in Congress.
The Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBTQ rights group that has endorsed Prescott, also did not return a request for comment or answer emailed questions related to the endorsement.
Prescott’s past views on same-sex marriage and his work to restrict it are public record but went previously unreported this election cycle, as well as the last. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, which Pappas won in 2022 with 54 percent of the vote, as “likely Democrat.” An election forecast model from The Hill and Decision Desk HQ predicts Pappas has an 85 percent chance of being reelected.
Same-sex marriage rights in the U.S. are largely considered secure under a 2015 Supreme Court decision and a 2022 law signed by President Biden, though LGBTQ rights groups have suggested the high court’s conservative majority and the possibility of a second Trump term threaten those protections.
In July, members of the Republican National Committee voted to remove references to marriage as a union exclusively between “one man and one woman” from the party’s 2024 policy platform. The new platform pledges to promote “the sanctity of marriage,” language religious figures and conservative lawmakers have long used to ban same-sex marriage.
In the heavily Democratic Northeast, New Hampshire, whose Legislature and governor’s office are both controlled by Republicans, remains the singular holdout in advancing certain LGBTQ rights and protections.
The state’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu in July signed legislation barring transgender student-athletes from sports teams that match their gender identity and allowing parents to opt their children out of public school lessons that touch on sexuality and gender identity or expression.
Also in July, New Hampshire became the region’s first state to restrict access to transition-related care under a bill signed by Sununu that bans gender-affirming surgery for trans minors. That bill, which passed the state House and Senate with help from Democrats, initially sought to ban all gender-affirming care for minors but was later amended to restrict only genital surgeries, which professional organizations like the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society do not recommend for individuals under 18.