The least surprising news to come out of state legislatures this week had nothing to do with elections, but instead with convictions. Not of the good sort, mind you — of the legal type.
In Manchester, New Hampshire, Democrat Stacie Laughton made history: First, Laughton — born Barry Charles Laughton, Jr. — became the first transgender-identified state lawmaker in U.S. history way back in 2012.
Then, on Tuesday, he became the first transgender lawmaker in state history to plead guilty to child pornography charges.
According to Manchester’s WMUR-TV, Laughton entered the plea “in federal court in Boston to charges including sexual exploitation of children in a child sex abuse images case.
“The plea comes after her [sic] former partner, Lindsay Groves, admitted last month to taking sexually explicit photos of children at the Massachusetts day care where she worked and sending them to Laughton,” the station noted.
Laughton has a long history with the law, starting in 2008 when he was convicted on felony charges of conspiracy to commit credit card fraud and falsifying physical evidence. When this came to light, he stepped down from his selectman position, only to run for the state legislature in 2019 after a 10-year “good behavior” ban.
This was despite Laughton being arrested in 2015 on a felony charge of making a bomb threat against a hospital and again in July 2021 for misuse of the state’s 911 texting system.
Should there be a national law requiring castration for those who derive sexual pleasure from children?
He was elected again in 2022 but then resigned after accusations of stalking came to light just days after the election. Then came the 2023 charges of child pornography possession and distribution.
Former state Rep. Stacie Marie Laughton of Derry, the first openly transgender person elected to the N.H. House of Representatives, was arrested Thursday by Nashua police on charges she allegedly distributed child sexual abuse images, officials said… https://t.co/XK9RSbOP3p
— UnionLeader.com (@UnionLeader) June 23, 2023
Prosecutors said at the time of the arraignment that over 2,500 text messages were exchanged between Laughton and Grove, including “explicit photographs that Groves had taken of children while employed at [the day care] – including at least four sexually explicit images of children who appear to be approximately three to five years old,” WFXT-TV in Boston reported at the time.
Groves, the station reported, “took nude images of children at the daycare and sent the photos to Laughton, with whom she was previously in an intimate relationship, between May 2022 and June 2023.”
After Groves pleaded guilty in October, WMUR noted that prosecutors’ contention was that “Laughton asked Groves to take the explicit photos and wanted access to the children for sex.”
Mercifully, the plot does not seem to have progressed to that stage.
There is the subtext here that cannot be ignored: Look, there are twisted people on both sides of the political aisle, but it’s beyond clear that the home of most of the worst perversions is the Democratic Party.
Not only that, but they demand that we celebrate these perversions — until it becomes too much for voters, then there’s a retreat that’s always temporary.
This is why Drag Queen Story Hour is no longer the Big Thing™ it once was. Why were these drag queens not reading in nursing homes, say, or serving in soup kitchens? Why specifically in schools and libraries, and to children?
But call it grooming in 2023, and watch the baying and howling from the mainstream media begin. Meanwhile, the Stacie Laughton case didn’t get much coverage outside of the Manchester area or in conservative outlets — and, naturally, it was all assumed to be part of some kind of campaign of “transphobia” on our parts.
When — not if — the transgender blitz resumes in earnest, at least we can say this: Laughton will still be behind bars and have years and years to serve, if the justice system works as it should.
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