Montana Republicans tried to erase a transgender lawmaker. Instead, they created a hero.
Republican lawmakers in Montana eagerly hustled to the wrong side of history this week and voted to silence the state’s first openly transgender representative. Her crime? Having the audacity to say something Republicans didn’t want to hear, and apparently having the gall to exist.
Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr told her Republican colleagues last week that if they passed a bill banning gender-affirming health care for minors, they'd have blood on their hands. She was right. Transgender youth already have horrendously high suicide rates, and reputable medical organizations including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have made clear that gender-affirming care is “lifesaving” and dramatically reduces suicide rates.
Take away that care and what do you think will happen? More transgender youth will die. That’s not being sensational. That’s not being alarmist. It’s looking at the data, listening to the medical experts and stating the facts.
Republicans continue trying to erase people
But rather than considering facts, rather than listening to doctors who spoke out against the ban, rather than hearing transgender people like Zephyr, Montana Republicans got offended by the lawmaker’s comment and voted to shut her down, barring her from the House floor for the remainder of the session. They voted to silence her. They tried, essentially, to erase her, the same thing Republicans in red states across the country are trying to do to all transgender people by adopting draconian anti-transgender laws.
It is quite a luxury to be bothered – for reasons I’ll never understand – by another human’s identity, and to respond by saying, “I’ll just try to legislate this identity out of existence. I’ll just order anyone going on about it to hush.”
As if the world has given you the right to decide what is and isn’t, and who should or shouldn’t exist. Quite the luxury, indeed.
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The 'eradication of our community'
Zephyr talked about her “blood on your hands” comment like this: “I was not being hyperbolic. I was speaking to the real consequences of the votes that we as legislators take in this body. And when the speaker asks me to apologize on behalf of decorum, what he is really asking me to do is be silent when my community is facing bills that get us killed. He's asking me to be complicit in this legislature's eradication of our community. And I refuse to do so.”
Imagine having your identity – your very sense of who you are – treated like a problem. Like something that needs to be dealt with.
That’s where Zephyr is, and it’s where transgender youth across this country are being placed. In a state of questioning their right to be.
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Republicans will quickly learn Americans don't favor cruelty
It’s abhorrent. It’s the work of fragile people with weak minds and opportunistic intentions.
But the thing people like those Republicans in Montana miss is that Americans, by and large, don’t take kindly to cruelty. Erasure doesn’t sit well with us. The oft-referenced arc of our moral universe, slowly but surely, finds its way to justice.
Some tried to erase Black people. Some tried to erase gay and lesbian people. Now some are trying to erase transgender people. There’s a trend line here, and in no way does it favor those on the side of bigotry and exclusion.
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In trying to silence Zooey Zephyr, they made her a hero
That’s cold comfort for the transgender community right now as it faces a flurry of harmful legislation.
But there is, I hope, some good to be found in seeing what the smallness of Republicans in the Montana Legislature did to Zooey Zephyr. By trying to silence her, they made sure she was heard. By trying to diminish her, they made her larger than life, a national figure. By accusing her of violating decorum, they revealed their own lack of decency.
As Republicans in Tennessee recently found out after they expelled two Black lawmakers for speaking out about gun control, when you’re on the wrong side of history and you try to erase those who don’t line up with your narrow worldview, you don’t wind up proving your point.
You wind up minting heroes.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Montana Republicans barring trans lawmaker Zooey Zephyr made her hero
