 If you disallow the use of the medical care that is accepted by every major medical association, if you disallow that care and don't allow people to have access to that, the only therapy left is either A, meaningless, or B, conversion therapy, which is torture. Intersex people exist, trans people exist, and this bill doesn't change that. At the very end of the bill, the letter that says life altering medical procedures should wait until they are adults, what I will say is if you are, buy this bill and buy what these amendments do, if you are forcing a trans child to go through puberty when they are trans, that is tantamount to torture. 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. You just listened to a speech from Zoe Zephyr. She is Montana's first openly transgender lawmaker ever, and we heard her eloquently explain the dangers of their proposed ban on gender-affirming care for minors. But apparently they didn't listen because the bill passed and Montana's Republican governor Greg Gianforte has signaled that he will be signing it into law when it comes to his desk. And like that, Montana becomes another state that banned gender-affirming care for minors in a year poised to be one of the most deadly for trans people in American history. The ACLU has tracked a total of 469 anti-LGBTQ-plus bills proposed in state legislatures across the country this year, and the overwhelming majority of these bills are anti-trans. And in Montana, they can't feign ignorance here, none of them can, really, but in this instance, they had an actual trans person explain to them the dangers of this bill, but not only did they refuse to listen, they punished her for what we heard her say. Vice reports, GOP politicians in Montana aren't allowing the state's first openly transgender representative to speak about bills on the House floor for the rest of this year's legislative session after she spoke out against a bill that banned gender-affirming care for minors, saying those who voted for it would have blood on their hands. What ensued were repeated GOP-led attempts this week to silence the first-term representative. On Tuesday, House Majority Leader, Sue Vinton, called Zephyrus' comments inappropriate before the deeply conservative Montana Freedom Caucus called for Zephyrus' immediate censure. The caucus deliberately misgendered her in their public statement, while ironically calling for civil discourse. Efforts to block Zephyrus' participation continued Thursday when she tried to debate yet another anti-trans bill, Senate Bill 458, which narrowly defines sex based on whether a person produces sperm or eggs. But instead of calling on her to speak, House Speaker Matt Regere, a Republican, ignored her. When Zephyrus' fellow Democrat, House Minority Leader Kim Abbott, asked why Zephyrus wasn't recognized, Regere said he had the right as House Speaker to disallow representatives from speaking, citing legislative rules. He also said multiple discussions with other lawmakers led to his decision. The House Rules Committee ultimately backed Regere's decision on a party line vote despite Democrat opposition. While Zephyrus hasn't formally been censured yet, Regere has said he won't call on her in floor debate until she apologizes. Yeah, so in other words, she hurt their feelings. And they're mad. They also don't like being reminded that they're on the wrong side of history, and they are literally aiding a genocide against a vulnerable group of people on the basis of their identity. That has got to make them feel uneasy unless they're completely sociopathic, I'm assuming most of them are. But I mean, let's be clear here, what they're doing, this is violence. This is an ordinary bigotry that we're talking about here. When gay couples were first denied equal marriage rights, that wasn't correlated with an increase in suicidality. In this instance, however, it has been shown that gender firming care has a direct impact on trans youth. It decreases depression and suicidal ideation. This is true for trans adults as well. Therefore, if you block this medically necessary healthcare, that's not just the simple denial of civil rights. It is a death sentence for some trans people. But despite that reality, they are continuing to pass these bans regardless, and they know what they're doing. And the goal is to erase trans people out of existence either legally or by compelling them to commit suicide by denying them this lifesaving healthcare. This is a genocide. And Zoey is right to let them know that blood will be on their hands as a result of this, but they don't care. And they've shown that they don't care. But that still doesn't make it any less true even if they don't care. And obviously, they've got to care at least a little bit because when that is pointed out to them, well, that's what they do. They silence her. But Zoey is not taking this lying down. And neither is her constituents because a petition with 3,200 names all demanding that Speaker Regir let her speak stretched from the house all the way to the Rotunda. So needless to say, there's been backlash here in the same way that Tennessee Republicans faced backlash after they voted to expel two black lawmakers. Now, she spoke more about this in an interview with Jake Tapper. And I think that what she says here is really important because we can talk about, you know, why it's bad that they silenced her. We can talk about the statistics and why it's necessary for people to have access to gender or foreign care. But nothing can compete with a trans person sharing her lived experience. So let's listen. Speaker Regir has stated that he's not going to recognize me on any legislation, regardless of topic. And what I will say is I was elected on behalf of my constituents to come here and debate bills and have the hard discussions. And I will punch in on every bill that my community would want me to speak on. And what the speaker does with that is up to him. So let's talk about what you said because, you know, I think the Montana Freedom Caucus is correct that you tried to shame the legislative body. I'm not judging whether that was right or wrong, but you definitely were. Why do you think it is can't amount to torture? Why do you think that lawmakers who vote against allowing trans kids or kids who identify as a different gender than the one they were signed at birth, having puberty blockers, for example, why would that cause there to be blood on their hands? So I know as a trans person, the joy and how we come alive when we are allowed to transition. And I know the pain that comes with not being able to transition. Also, in terms of blood on their hands, I have lost several trans friends to suicide this year. I have had trans family members tell me or trans Montanans and their parents tell me about suicide attempts in their family, including one trans teenager who attempted to take her life while watching a hearing on one of these anti-trans bills. That's the impact that this legislation has. And that's why I rose to defend my community and hold the Republicans accountable for their actions. So obviously a lot of opposition to the transgender community is rooted in ignorance and bigotry, without question. What might you say to somebody who says, look, there just isn't enough research on trans kids getting these procedures done, whether it's puberty blockers or a more severe step such as a sex reassignment surgery. And sometimes it happens every now and then that somebody regrets it. And we want to make sure that that doesn't happen. What would your message be to that person? I would say first and foremost, we acknowledge when it comes to other procedures, any other type of medical care. We go with the recommendations of the major medical associations and every major medical association says that gender affirming care is important. It's life saving for trans people. And when it comes to people saying, well, if there's some person may regret, there may be a detransition or down the line, you look at something like knee surgeries that have a huge 5% regret rate. The regret rate for transition is minimal. The regret rate for gender affirming surgeries is less than 1%. This care saves lives. We know it. We know what reduces suicidality. We know the regret rate is minimal. This care is important and my community needs access to it. I appreciate Jake Tapper bringing her on and giving her a platform. And I'm sure that with these questions he was asking, he was just playing devil's advocate, but all of those questions that he asked should have already been answered by the network. Because during this unprecedented wave of attacks that we're seeing on trans people, it is incumbent on every single pundit in America to supply viewers with the objective facts about gender affirming care. That is very, very important. It's a matter of life and death. But with that being said, Zoe proved how important it is to speak to someone with this lived experience. You can talk about statistics and studies until you're blue in the face, but hearing from a trans person and their perspective, that is crucial here. But getting back to her being silenced, this move comes, as I stated, weeks after Tennessee's legislature voted to expel two black lawmakers, but that didn't work out too well. And I guess that Montana didn't see how Tennessee's GOP had to learn the hard way that using undemocratic tactics to silence political opponents is always going to backfire, because not only are you turning these lawmakers into martyrs, but you're also shining a light on your own disgusting behavior here. But I don't expect that to dissuade them, because Republicans are ghouls and they will continue to do ghoulish disgusting things, because it seems like the only purpose of this party in 2023 is to inflict as much pain and suffering on normal people as they possibly can. With that being said, I stand in solidarity with Zoe and I really, really appreciate her voice, because it's got to be intimidating being the only trans lawmaker in your state to speak up. But her voice is invaluable there, and I would implore other people across the country to speak up, because now is the time to not remain silent. Now is the time to speak up as loudly as possible before things get even worse in this country.