The Republican supermajority in the Montana House of Representatives voted yesterday to censure state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, the body’s first transgender woman lawmaker, on trumped up claims that she had “disrupted” House proceedings Monday by standing up silently with a nonfunctional microphone, while supporters in the gallery chanted “Let her speak!” For good measure, the accusation also claimed that by not leaving the floor when asked to do so, Zephyr had somehow “endangered” lawmakers and staff, because maybe the protesters would have run riot or something.
While the censure motion didn’t formally include it, the punishment was obvious payback for comments Zephyr made last week in which she said that if her colleagues voted to prohibit gender-affirming care for transgender minors, she hoped that “the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.” Since then, Republican House Speaker Matt Regier has refused to recognize Zephyr or let her address the House.
Previously:
Montana Republicans Want In On That ‘Expel Democrats’ Thing That Worked So Well For Tennessee
As a result of the party-line, 68-to-32 censure vote, Zephyr will be banned from the House floor and other areas until the end of the session on May 5. She will be allowed to watch House proceedings by video and to vote remotely, but cannot participate in debates. Her ability to participate fully in the House will be restored in next year’s session, at least until Republicans find a pretext to silence her again, because “decorum.”
Zephyr was graciously allowed five minutes to defend herself before the vote, during which she explained — from a desk covered in bouquets of flowers from supporters — why she had to speak up for trans kids, who will suffer if SB 99, the bill banning gender- affirming care, becomes law:
“I rose up in defense of my community that day, speaking to harms that these bills bring that I have firsthand experience knowing about. I have had friends who have taken their lives because of these bills. I have fielded calls from families in Montana, including one family whose trans teenager attempted to take her life while watching a hearing on one of the anti trans bills.”
She noted that when Democrats had pleaded to have some inflammatory, decidedly undecorous testimony — the usual bullshit about “mutilation” of children — excluded during that debate, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee simply said that “a lot of people have a lot of opinions on these things.”
So when I rose up and said there is blood on your hands, 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’s 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. I will always refuse to do so.
If you use “decorum” to silence people who hold you accountable, then all you’re doing is using decorum as a tool of oppression.
The rest of the quick show trial featured alternating statements for and against censure from three Republicans and three Democrats, with the Democrats pointing out that protest and disagreement and even strong words are a normal part of democracy, and that the multiple anti-trans bills passed by the Montana Lege this term will do real harm to the LGBTQ+ community.
State Rep. SJ Howell, who is nonbinary, pointed out that were it not for the raft of bills aimed at limiting the rights of LGBTQ+ Montanans, none of this would have been an issue.
“We did not look for that fight. But when it came to us, we did what we had to do. We did our jobs. We stood up, we stood with our community. We told the truths that we live every day. We hoped you would listen.”
Howell went on to say that it was “deeply unsurprising to me” that Montanans came to the House Monday to protest, because it wasn’t simply that Zephyr had been silenced. “That happened after a session of debating bills that only impact some of us, and struggling for equal treatment under the law.”
Republicans, on the other hand, explained again and again that there are rules of conduct and decorum, and that without those rules the Legislature can’t get its job done, so the rules must be enforced. One dickweed even claimed that the real “assault on democracy” occurred Monday when Zephyr stood silently in solidarity with the protesters in the gallery, because wasn’t that inciting the “disruptive antics” of the crowd? Without order and discipline, the Rs all agreed, there can be no free speech, OK? No one gets to flout the rules. (Unless they have the backing of the supermajority.)
The vote, when it came, was no surprise. Zephyr left the House floor, and later tweeted a photo showing that on the way out, she had turned on the light on her desk requesting to be recognized, since now her constituents won’t be until next year.
Now, Republicans who wanted to silence a troublesome Democrat have once more created a national figure, as this Google Trends screenshot of searches for “Zooey Zephyr” in the last 30 days suggests. Zephyr appeared on MSNBC last night with briefly expelled Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones and rising Democratic congressional star Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Florida). Jones offered this succinct evaluation of the political mood, saying that American fascists are now “in the Find Out portion of our movement.”
In the midst of this ugly fight to save democracy, the spirit of solidarity is inspiring. If that isn’t a Nice Time, I don’t know what is.
[Reuters / Montana Free Press / NBC News]
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