Transgender Montana State Rep. Zooey Zephyr is fighting back after Republicans voted to bar her from the House floor as punishment for speaking out against a bill that would ban gender affirming care for minors.
For days after her comment, Zephyr was blacklisted from speaking during debate, and at one point had her microphone turned off. When protesters began flooding the chamber’s gallery on her behalf, the representative lifted her microphone in solidarity with her supporters. Republicans claimed the move “encouraged the continuation of the disruption of this body, placing legislators, staff and even our pages at the risk of harm.
Despite the retaliation from the GOP, Zephyr has no plans to back down. “I have had friends who have taken their lives because of these bills,” she said in a floor speech shortly before the vote for her removal. “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.”
“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,” she continued. “He is asking me to be complicit in this legislature’s eradication of our community, and I refuse to do so.”
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