(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A bullhorn and crowd wouldn't have worked quite as well: Muzzling Zephyr will backfire – Daily Montanan [1] ['More From Author', 'April', 'Darrell Ehrlick'] Date: 2023-04-21 Remember when Rep. Braxton Mitchell, R-Columbia Falls, suggested that the only reason more people didn’t testify in support of banning drag shows was because so many people had jobs? The implication: All the drag queens and their fans were unemployed. That was, of course, coming from a legislator who doesn’t appear to have a job himself, unless you count his crusade against the LGBTQ+ community. And that was before he suggested that kids are putting money into the G-strings of drag queens. So, when Montana Speaker of the House Matt Regier’s decided to muzzle Rep. Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, from speaking on the House floor, it rings more than a little hollow. Regier, defending his pettiness, reminded everyone that he’s the Speaker and he’s in charge (just what Montana needs — more men who are very serious about being men). He decided that the sanctity, honor and decorum of the Montana House is so hallowed that he must silence her because she would dare to accuse Republicans of having blood on their hands for their repeated attacks on transgender people and the LGBTQ+ community. Zephyr, in Regier’s words, shamed Republicans for their votes. Nice to know they still have some shame. Remember also that it was in those storied halls lawmakers have previously defended the right to drive drunk as a means of supporting rural economies by patronizing bars. How dare Zephyr say something that would imply lawmakers might not be fully considering the weight of their words when they assert that transgender people and their allies support genital mutilation or that simply existing is a perversion? I apologize if I missed the Speaker’s condemnation previously. If Republicans were really so concerned about policy and doing the right thing, they’d know that muzzling Zephyr was only going to make her cause more sympathetic. I challenge anyone to come up with a more anti-Montanan action than forcibly telling someone to shut up. It wasn’t Democrats who decided to bring legislation that would try to marginalize, mute, ban, and make felons out of the LGBTQ+ community. Democrats came into the session in small enough numbers that any legislation that they successfully carry cannot even be heard, let alone approved, without the help of Republicans. Had not Republicans introduced a raft of bills meant to humiliate, degrade and treat them as second-class citizens, drag queens would be reading in libraries – as they are now — a handful of birth certificates may be changed without any great fanfare, and Zephyr would be just another lawmaker. Instead, lawmakers have pushed forward bill after bill that left the LGBTQ+ community and their allies in a virtually unwinnable position: Accept the humiliation and indignity of being relegated into the shadows, labeled as deviants, groomers or pedophiles, or do what any of us who have had our values and loved ones attacked would do: Fight like hell, using Montana’s historic live-and-let-live spirit. Meanwhile those purporting to speak for families and values seem to believe that LGBTQ+ folks are somehow not a part of our families, as if they lived in entirely different communities, leading similar lives that never intersect ours. You’d think they’d want to stick up for all Montana families, period. They speak of values but don’t value some of our residents enough to use preferred pronouns, or make bullying transgender kids illegal. At that point, it’s not a value so much as it is being civil. Many Republicans seem happy to equate the LGBTQ+ community and drag queens with pedophiles and groomers, even though it is the GOP which can’t quit with its fixation on combinations of sex organs. In all of the conversations that have taken place at the Capitol about gender, anatomy and sexual identity, it hasn’t been Zephyr or others who have started legislation or debates about body parts, genitals or sexual acts. There has been one group talking about those things, and it isn’t the Democrats. I want to congratulate Speaker Regier for inadvertently reinforcing a time-honored Republican principle, though. Using the law of supply-and-demand, he has made Zephyr’s words more scarce, and therefore more valuable. The legislature, like all other lawmaking sessions before it, has featured windbags, bloviators and people whose own voices are as sweet to them as a siren’s song. You can listen to floor sessions for hours and not hear much worth remembering. If he really didn’t want people to hear what she has to say – to push an agenda he and his party feel is so wrong – he should have asked her to speak more, not less and made these long last legislative days just that more tedious. But instead of ignoring or tolerating Zephyr’s comments, Regier has now made her the most interesting legislator there. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2023/04/21/a-bullhorn-and-crowd-wouldnt-have-worked-quite-as-well-muzzling-zephyr-will-backfire/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/