Letters to the editor April 30

Attention-grabbing antics

Bravo to the Montana Republican lawmakers who banned Missoula’s Democrat Zooey Zephyr from speaking on the House floor for the remainder of this session. Her behavior was totally inapproprite, insulting and outrageous.

What you do with your alternative lifestyle choices in private is your business. However, your choices are now, next to climate change hysteria, apparently so critical that it is all we hear about. You are a very, very small portion of the population, yet you elbow and disrupt your way into everything with your demands.

Leave children, who have not reached their majority, alone. If they choose to alter themselves with whatever surgeries or hormones they wish then they can wait until then to begin the whole process.

Good on the Republicans for having a spine and not putting up with these attention-grabbing antics.We need decorum brought back to many areas of American life and thank God the Republican Montana lawmakers had the guts to say “Not in this House!”

— Jill Williams, Kalispell

Playing to the base

Sen. Steve Daines said on Twitter, “Spirited debate is encouraged in our democracy — it’s part of what makes our country great, but with that comes a responsibility to be civil and to avoid extreme rhetoric and violence. Endangering lawmakers and their staff is unacceptable.”

Forgive me, but for a moment there I thought he was finally taking a principled stand about the Jan. 6 insurrection at our nation’s Capitol. Turns out he was referring instead to the need to muzzle Missoula’s Rep. Zooey Zephyr, because of her graphic objections to a law that would criminalize health care for some of her constituents.

I am not sure which is more cowardly: refusing to acknowledge that our nation was attacked by violent insurrectionists, for fear of angering the base. Or attacking children for their gender identity struggles in order to placate that same base.

— Todd R. Clear, Whitefish

Zephyr is right

Montana Republicans have a problem with the truth. When they were given a dose of truth last week by Rep. Zooey Zephyr, they reacted first with pearl-clutching dramatics, second with the refusal to allow her to speak and, third with a censure that bans her from the House floor for the remainder of the term.

Zephyr told the House last week that if they voted in favor of a bill that bans gender affirming care for those under 18, the blood of those children will be on their hands. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, receipt of gender affirming care (puberty blockers and gender affirming hormones) decreased depression by 60% and decreased suicide by 73%. Denying those kids the appropriate care will increase depression and suicide. Their blood is on the hands of the members of the House that voted for the bill in question.

House Republicans are allegedly offended by Zephyr’s breach of decorum. I’ve watched her speech numerous times and I see no breach. What I see is a passionate and well-spoken Representative doing the job she was elected to do.

House Republicans claim to be punishing Zephyr due to her lack of respect but they think nothing of deliberately misgendering her, verbally and in print, showing an extreme lack of respect on their part.

I suppose we should be used to their hypocrisy by now.

House Republicans have since engaged in facism by barring Zephyr from the floor. They are denying a duly elected representative the ability to engage in debate and participate in conversation. They are denying 11,000 people their representation in the House.

Rep. Zephyr is in the right here. House Republicans should be ashamed.

— Amy Weeks, Columbia Falls