I have been a bit behind on following all of the laws being passed this year. With the whirlwind of both the Trump administration’s changes and North Dakota’s attempt to also pass a lot of crazy bills, I haven’t been able to see some of the forest for the trees. A very good friend sent me an article from The Guardian reporting on transgender and non-binary lawmakers in Montana who flipped multiple republicans to stop a drag show ban law from passing. You love to see it.

Representatives SJ Howell and Zooey Zephyr

Their argument came down to: stop wasting the time of the legislature and the public with these ridiculous laws that are unconstitutional and unenforceable. That sounds like government efficiency to me, I like it. How did they get that message through to their opponents across the aisle? They were fuckin’ nice to them! You will probably hear me talk about the Radical Love of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. many, many times. Radical love starts with just being nice to everyone around you, even your enemies. Even if republicans are our current “opponents” that doesn’t mean they are our enemies. Some republicans are our enemies, some are potential allies. These transgender and non-binary lawmakers proved it!

Who are they? Representative Zooey Zephyr and Representative SJ Howell. I am not going to pretend to be a professional journalist or reporter, but there are both at The Guardian and LGTBQ Nation, so here is another link you should follow, read, and I also highly recommend you listen to the speeches.

Special shout out to Representative Sherry Essmann, a Republican who rose to also speak out against the bill. Representative Essmann spoke about how we need to trust parents to make the right decisions about what type of things their child see. Both Essmann and Zephyr are parents.

The impetus of these drag show bans is often to “protect children.” Montana previously had a law banning drag shows but the law was used to prevent a transgender native american woman from giving a lecture at a library. This was challenged in court and a federal judge blocked enforcement of the law because it would “disproportionally harm not only drag performers, but any person who falls outside traditional gender and identity norms.” So a Republican lawmaker, Rep. Caleb Hinkle sponsored a new bill which would allow people to bring lawsuits against drag performers, or businesses that allow drag performances at them? I dunno, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. He said, “transgenderism is a fetish based on crossdressing.” Damn that’s a new one to me, I would love to see all the scientific data you have to back that Representative Hinkle. Oh, wait, literally everyone knows that isn’t true.

I’ve never been to a drag show, but I can tell you from that picture that it isn’t about a fetish. It’s about pageantry and that is super American.

Another law would seek to remove transgender kids from their parents for being transgender. Ah-ha! See, you do acknowledge that trans kids/people exist! SJ Howell gave a speech to help defeat that bill. Asking to put yourself in the shoes of a Child Protective Services agent who is tasked with removing a perfectly happy and healthy trans child from the home just because they’re trans. And don’t you think there won’t be Karens who don’t report it just because a kid is trans. Some people would talk tough and say it’s “the right thing” but I challenge them to go and actually do it.

I would be remiss to not mention journalist Erin Reed, who also happens to be the spouse of Zooey Zephyr. Reed is an independent journalist and activist who has a daily newsletter that I really think you should read!

The point I’m trying to make here is: Transpeople, non-binary people, gender non-conforming people, any all y’all, we’re all just people. Transgender people are people. Cisgender people are people. With how many of each different type of person we got out there in the world, as many of them are going to be pieces of shit as there are awesome ones. Chris-chan is a piece of shit. Zooey Zephyr is awesome. Don’t look up Chris-Chan if you don’t know. Someone might be trans or non-binary but don’t pass judgment on them until you know them as a person, not just a label.

So why then so many bills against trans people if they’re just normal people like anyone else? That’s sort of a complicated question but the real answer is: These bills are a distraction. They want you to be focused on keeping trans folks out of sports or whatever so that you don’t notice the type of tax policies they’re passing. They say, “Hey look, a person in drag is going to read to a child!” so you don’t realize that they’re cutting veteran benefits. Authoritarian politicians, who often parade around as Republicans, don’t want to talk about policy, they want to talk about boogeymen.

Ask yourself what you really care about: Do you care about keeping trans people out of sports? Or do you care about a healthy economy where the working class can prosper? Because the people sponsoring and voting for bills banning trans-anything are the ones who are only interested in staying in power and lining their pockets while you fight a boogeyman and stay poor forever.