Trans Lawmaker Issues Ominous Warning About Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills

A transgender Montana lawmaker warned that Republican-led efforts to legislate the LGBTQ+ community are contributing to a culture of fear that serve little more than regulate people like her out of existence.

Speaking on CNN This Morning on Friday, Montana state Representative Zooey Zephyr—a transgender woman who made national headlines this year after facing a GOP-led effort to expel her from the statehouse for criticizing their anti-trans policies—said legislation restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ people appearing in states around the country are actively causing harm and potentially leading transgender youth to harm themselves.

As anti-LGBTQ+ legislation continues to emerge, Zephyr said, the risk to the community grows even more urgent, particularly as brands like Target and Kohl's have faced boycott threats for carrying merchandise that merely acknowledges that the LGBTQ community exists.

Even when those bills are unsuccessful, Zephyr said, the rhetoric surrounding the legislation is enough. In the lead-up to Republican efforts to expel her, Zephyr told colleagues that she fielded a call from the family of a transgender teen in her state who attempted suicide while watching a hearing on a colleague's bill against the trans community, prompting her to make the offending remark that they had "blood on their hands."

Montana is not unique: During the 2023 legislative cycle, the American Civil Liberties Union identified a record-setting 491 anti-LGBTQ+ bills circulating in state legislatures around the country, restricting everything from LGBTQ+ persons' freedom to express themselves to their ability to receive health care and even whether their existence is an appropriate discussion topic in public schools.

"When these bills come forward, they get talked about as if they're very narrow, like 'this is just about sports,' 'this is just about health care for a certain age group,'" Zephyr said. "But what we see in moments like this is that the people who support anti-LGBTQ bills, they're not content with a single piece of policy.

"They want to see us removed from all stores, they want to see us removed from public life. And to me, that's why it's so important in this moment that we fight back and that our allies, both individuals and corporations, are willing to stand alongside us."

Just having those discussions, she said, is enough. Recent studies show transgender adolescents face a 7.6 times higher risk of suicide than their cisgender peers, while other surveys note that the average lifespans of transgender individuals is substantially shorter than those of cisgender individuals.

Dehumanizing conversations about the value of trans lives, as shown by the teen who attempted suicide during one of their hearings in the statehouse, was proof enough, Zephyr said.

"The harm comes immediately even when these discussions are brought up," she said. "We know in Montana that there was a trans teen who attempted suicide while watching one of the hearings. That's how her mother found her, with the hearing up on the TV.

"This is the kind of risk that comes just from the discussion of these bills. And then as they get passed and enacted, it becomes harder and harder, because these bills themselves create conditions where having a joyful, meaningful life becomes very difficult for trans people and LGBTQ people."

Newsweek reached out to Zephyr via text message for comment.