BOZEMAN - Following the banning of Zooey Zephyr from the Montana House floor on Wednesday, MTN News reached out to the Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) organization at Montana State University to ask their opinion on Zephyr’s situation.
“It's really kind of ridiculous to us. Zooey represents 11,000 constituents who democratically elected her from Missoula, and not only are they silencing her voice in this process, but they're silencing all of those people who should be represented through the democratic process,” said the QSA of MSU Social Media Cooridatnor Vesper Remiel.
Remiel expressed his concerns about how blocking a transgender lawmaker makes the LGBTQIA community and himself feel.
“It's frustrating to see it,” Remiel said. “It's also like scary to see the ways in which, you know, they hold all the power, they have the house, the Senate, the governor, they can just decide to not recognize her.”
He feels as though these other representatives aren’t practicing what they preach.
“Feels kind of hypocritical when the whole argument about not letting her speak is about decorum,” Remiel said. “And part of decorum is going through the proper processes or channels. They are using this as a way to not hear those things about those bills that they're putting through.”
Remiel says it isn’t fair for the House of Representatives to ban Zephyr after they have made mistakes when speaking with her.
“They're not asking the people who repeatedly misgendered her to apologize or have interrupted her throughout the session to apologize,” Remiel said. “And we don't have that power, even though it's supposed to be our house and our democratically elected representatives.”
