GOP moves to censure trans Montana lawmaker over ‘blood on your hands’ remark: report

A transgender Montana lawmaker who took her fellow legislators to task over their vote to ban gender-affirming care is now facing calls for censure, The Advocate reports.

Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr on Tuesday told fellow lawmakers who support the ban on such care that they would have “blood on your hands.”

Zephyr made the comment amid a debate over amendments to a bill that already passed but went back to the House and Senate after Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte requested amendments to it.

The Advocate’s Trudy Ring writes that “The amendments assure that such care will be available to minors ‘born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development’ but not those seeking gender transition, Gianforte wrote in a letter to legislators, and strengthen a prohibition on public funding for transition-related treatments for young people.”

Gianforte’s letter also said ‘“Gender-affirming care’ for children is Orwellian Newspeak, a seemingly innocuous, even solicitous phrase that masks its true nature of permanent, invasive, life-altering and surgical procedures, performed on children whose young minds and bodies are still developing.”

Ring notes the term “newspeak” originated in George Orwell’s “1984” novel that depicts a dystopian future.

Zephyr pushed back on the House floor saying “Gender-affirming care is not ‘Orwellian Newspeak,’ as it says in this letter”

“It is accepted by every major medical association.”

The amendments define gender as binary, she noted.

“You could not legislate binary sex any more than you could legislate that the Earth is flat,” she said.

“Intersex people exist, trans people exist, and this bill doesn’t change that.”

Zephyr argued that denying gender-affirming care to non-binary children is tantamount to “torture.”

“If you are forcing a trans child to go through puberty when they are trans, that is tantamount to torture, and this body should be ashamed,” she continued. After House Majority Leader Sue Vinton, a Republican, said the body would not be shamed by any member, Zephyr added,

“The only thing I will say is if you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”

The Montana Freedom Caucus subsequently issued a statement calling for Zephyr's censure.

“This kind of hateful rhetoric from an elected official is exactly why tragedies such as the Covenant Christian School shooting in Nashville occurred,” the caucus said in a statement.

“Combined with former Montana Supreme Court Justice Jim Nelson’s recent calls for ‘jihad’ and a ‘fight to the death,’ there is unmistakable evidence of a desire for some to engage in violence over political beliefs. This must stop.”

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