Q Toon: To Helena Handbasket

For last week's cartoon about Republicans and their assault on transgender Americans, I drew a generic GOP elephant because I hadn't wanted to single out any one anti-trans, red-state Republican as being any worse than the rest of them. This week, however, I'm singling out the state of Montana, where  Republican legislative leaders muzzled and expelled Representative Zooey Zephyr (D-Missoula), a transgender woman herself, who dared to speak up in no uncertain terms against a bill outlawing gender-affirming therapy for minors. 

Obviously, Republicans feel very deeply about some horrible danger that is posed whenever transgender people are allowed to be their authentic selves, so I'm trying here to understand what is motivating them to rush these laws through one state legislature after another over the objections of medical professionals, and transgender citizens and their parents.

They even ignore their own children: Governor Greg Gianforte's 32-year-old non-binary son David, who lobbied their dad to veto the bill — to no avail.

David said they had asked their father to think about transgender Montanans with empathy and compassion, even if the governor didn’t share their experiences. In his letter to lawmakers explaining the amendments, [Governor] Gianforte referenced those same values — empathy and compassion — while also expressing support for the bill. To David, the letter didn’t make sense.

“It’s bizarre to me to read the press release that my father put out,” David said. “He talks about compassion toward children, the youth of Montana, while simultaneously taking away health care from the youth in Montana. It’s basically a contradiction in my mind.”

More mystifying than Governor Gianforte is the case of Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe (R-Billings Heights), a sponsor of Montana's anti-trans bill, who told lawmakers that she would rather her daughter commit suicide than have gender therapy — and it was no mere hypothetical scenario.

Republican Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, who recently sponsored a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors, suggested in March during a debate on the floor of the Montana statehouse that she had blocked the treatment for her own daughter, even as her daughter was suicidal.

“One of the big issues that we have heard today and we’ve talked about lately is that without surgery the risk of suicide goes way up. Well, I am one of those parents who lived with a daughter who was suicidal for three years,” Seekins-Crowe said, according to a clip shared on Twitter, demonstrating how close to home the issue hit for her family.

But it was what she said next that left observers so stunned.

“Someone once asked me, ‘Wouldn’t I just do anything to help save her?’ And I really had to think and the answer was, ‘No,’” Seekins-Crowe said.

She went on to call her daughter’s suicidal tendencies “emotional manipulation” and claimed that it was her responsibility as a parent to make decisions when her daughter had no “vision” for her life.

I hope Ms. Seekins-Crowe doesn't have high expectations for Mother's Day gifts this year.

Would I find a more compassionate response by looking beyond the political elite?

Republican editorial cartoonist Mike Lester included commentary with his cartoon for Counterpoint the other day that gave me Tucker Carlson Face for the rest of the day:

[A]s long as I can remember, both sides have always relied on the one thing we could all agree on: "the next generation." Children were our future. Now they're our lab frogs and it's THE hill to die on for every parent I know. 

What I take from this is that he truly believes that allowing parents of a child with gender dysphoria the option of gender therapy will result in mad scientists working for Big Wokernment performing experimental gender surgery on children without their parents' consent.

This is not like our fight against conversion therapy, the quack science that purports to turn LGBTQ+ patients into flaming heterosexuals, and which is usually performed against the patient's wish. Judging from Lester's cartoon, however, he must think that The Left wants to perform gender reassignment surgery on unsuspecting youth not just without their consent but without their knowledge.

(I should note here that gender-affirming therapy on minors involves hormonal therapy and puberty blockers, but — aside from the now discouraged practice of allowing parents to decide whether they want their intersex infant to be surgically made male or female — not genital surgery.)

One thing I agree with Mike Lester, however, is that children are our future. Or, more to the point, not ours but theirs.

Someday, those children are going to view these anti-trans laws the same way we adults see antiquated laws against dancing on Sunday or shooting rabbits from a motorboat.

And perhaps that day is sooner than today's Republicans think.