This is beautiful and the exact way to deal with the scourge of transgenderism, bar them from speaking or even being present on the floor.
Montana House Republicans discipline transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr over protest
Zephyr was barred from the chamber floor for raising a mic Monday to protesters chanting, “Let her speak!" on debates about gender-affirming care for minors.
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Christopher Wilson and
Marquise Francis
Wed, April 26, 2023 at 12:58 PM CDT
Republican lawmakers in Montana voted to bar Rep. Zooey Zephyr from the chamber floor for the remainder of the legislative session after the state’s only transgender lawmaker spoke out against a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors.
Zephyr, a freshman Democratic lawmaker who represents the college town Missoula, is banned from the floor and gallery in Helena, the capital, but would still be able to vote by Zoom. On Monday, she raised her microphone toward supporters in the Statehouse gallery above as they chanted, “Let her speak!”
Voting went along party lines, with 68 Republicans in favor and 32 Democrats opposed. Republicans had also considered her expulsion.
[IMG alt="Rep. Zooey Zephyr"]
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Zephyr stands in protest as demonstrators are arrested in the House gallery on Monday. (Thom Bridge/Independent Record via AP)
Zephyr said on Wednesday that in the last week she “rose up in defense of my community” and of “democracy itself.”
“I was speaking to the real consequences of the votes that we as legislators take in this body,” she said, speaking for the first time on the House floor in more than a week. “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,” she added, delivering her five-minute speech in a calm yet assertive tone. “And I refuse to do so and I will always refuse to do so.”
Zephyr said that since she’s been in office she has fielded calls from families of trans youth in peril, including one family whose trans teenager attempted to take her life while watching a hearing on one of the anti-trans bills.
“So when I rose up and said there is blood on your hands, I was not being hyperbolic,” she said.
Zephyr
tweeted Tuesday evening that she had been informed “there will be a motion to either censure or expel me.” The motion was the latest development in what critics have called
attempts to silence the legislator. Last Tuesday, in an impassioned speech on a proposal that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, Zephyr told Republicans that they would have "blood on [their] hands" if they went through with the plan.