Republicans Ramp Up Attacks

On transgender people, in statehouses and on the campaign trail

 

By Eric Bradner, Steve Contorno and Kate Sullivan, CNN
Sunday April 30, 2023

People attending the rally as part of a
Transgender Day of Visibility
on March 31 in Washington, DC.

My Note: This is an excerpt from a long CNN article highlighting the Fascist-Republican Party's attacks on our community. This one section  details the plight of a duly elected Representative, one of us, who spoke truth.  Read the whole article.

    

From statehouses to the presidential campaign trail, Republicans are escalating their political attacks on transgender people – a reflection of what they see as a cultural fight their base is eager to wage.

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In Montana, Democratic state Rep. Zooey Zephyr – the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker, and Reed’s partner – was targeted for disciplinary action after she told supermajority House Republicans that they would have “blood” on their hands over a bill that would ban gender-affirming care. House Republicans voted to ban Zephyr from the chamber for the remainder of this year’s legislative session after she refused House Speaker Matt Regier’s demands that she apologize and after GOP state lawmakers had blamed her for protests in the House gallery that resulted in seven people being arrested last week.

Montana State Rep. Zooey Zephyr

The vote came minutes after a defiant Zephyr had defended her comments as “not hyperbolic.” She said she’d heard from the family of a transgender teenager who attempted suicide after watching an online stream of a legislative committee meeting this year in which transgender people were referred to as pedophiles and groomers.

“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,” she said. “He’s asking me to be complicit in this legislature’s eradication of our community, and I refuse to do so, and I will always refuse to do so.”

Members of the Montana Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative state legislators, repeatedly misgendered Zephyr in statements, referring to her as a man.

Zephyr, banned from the House floor, on Thursday and Friday worked from a bench just outside the chamber.

See the related article: House passes anti-trans sports bill