Hoist by her own petard

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Last week, Merrimack state Rep. Nancy Elliott had to eat her words and apologize for making the kind of thoughtless comments that have led to so much disdain for elected officials.

She was, in a phrase, hoist by her own petard, which is defined as “injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others.”

Here’s what she did:

Apparently she got a message of some sort from the parent of a Nashua fifth-grader who, she said, told her that gay sex was being taught in Nashua public schools and she used this message as fodder to push for the overturn of the state’s reasonable and, finally, fair support of gay marriage.

Here’s what she said about that:

“Because we have made a marriage of same sex, they are now teaching it in public school. They are showing our fifth-graders how they can actually perform this kind of sex.”

Ah, but … suddenly, she discovered that no such thing was being taught in Nashua schools (as any thinking person would have realized right away) and this week, she back-peddled.

Here’s what she said:

“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. I will try much harder in the future to verify fully my statement.”

What a fine idea.

The real question though, is this: Why would Rep. Elliott just take the word of a single parent – if it was indeed a parent, anyway, and not some random ideologue – and run with it? Why not check before she spoke? Well, one might fairly think she did so because this parent told her precisely what she wanted to hear. We hope that isn’t so, but how else can one look at it? One person tells her something and she announces it to her little corner of the political world as gospel. Why?

And in last week’s Journal, we reported that despite her apology, Elliott maintained she believed what she said was true at the time. Of course she did. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have run with it. But that still begs the question: Why believe something so outlandish because one person told you?

And who was this person, anyway? A concerned parent or a hate-monger? Given the fact that the information this parent supplied to Rep. Elliott was a lie, we assume the latter.

Fortunately Elliott’s colleagues in the Statehouse didn’t fall for this and, we are happy to say, last week soundly defeated two efforts by so-called “conservatives” to roll back gay marriage laws, including a move to create a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Good for the House.

This is a sad commentary on the state of public discourse in New Hampshire and the nation. We don’t begrudge Rep. Elliott’s opposition to gay marriage, although we think it’s unfortunate, but we do begrudge using the kind of argument that seeks to demonize those who are different.

Ironically, what Rep. Elliott ended up doing was hurting her own cause more than hurting the cause of gay men and women.