Montana Senator Did Not Even Read His Own Anti-trans Bill - Trans Supporters Outnumber Anti-Trans Testimony 4 to 1

Activists showed up in force against an anti-trans bill in Montana. Medical experts representing tens of thousands of Montana professionals and the first trans representative there spoke.

It was a striking moment in a round of questions. The senators gathered in the Judiciary committee of Montana were hearing SB99, an anti-trans bill that would forcibly medically detransition all transgender youth in the state. For the five hours proceeding the hearing, activists supporting the transgender community outnumbered the proponents of the bill 4:1. Doctors representing organizations with tens of thousands of physicians and providers spoke out against the bill. Trans youth, many of whom were minors, begged and pleaded with the committee for their basic rights and dignity. It was time for questions, and the first question from Senator Jen Gross.

Sen. Gross inquired of the bill sponsor, Senator John Fuller, how his bill treated intersex people and if he knew what intersex was. He looked flabbergasted, “How does that relate to this bill?”

On a follow up, Sen. Gross further inquired about intersex treatment in the bill and the sponsor then looked incredulous, stating, “Senator, it’s clear you have not read the bill.”

There was just one problem for him. Intersex conditions are in his bill, and he had no idea. His bill is a carbon copy of 18 other bills that are floating around the United States right now known as SAFE acts. These bills ban gender affirming care for trans youth and use a variety of mechanisms to do so. These bills are also pushed by the same organizations that shop for legislators in several states to try to pass these bans. The New York Times reported this week:

Many bills contain nearly identical language, suggesting a common template.

…

“It’s not because they don’t think folks can give adequate consent,” she said, pointing also to the bills’ exceptions: The same treatments banned for transgender children would be allowed for intersex children, whose sexual organs, hormones or chromosomes fall on the spectrum between male and female. “They don’t want people to get this care because they don’t think being trans is real.

You can see the intersex portion of the bill here:

Intersex portion of SB99

That’s when Senator Susan Weber, noting Sen Fuller’s answer, inquired of an expert witness, Dr. Lauren Wilson, about the treatment of intersex people in the bill. Dr. Wilson was representing the Montana chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents the vast majority of pediatricians in Montana. She quickly pointed out that intersex conditions were indeed in the bill, and furthermore, these surgeries that the bill would ban would be entirely allowed on intersex youth who could not consent. See the entire exchange here:

It is not surprising to find out that the sponsor of this bill did not read his own bill. The testimony was filled with out-of-state “experts” on the side of those who supported the bill. We saw the same political detransitioners that are flown from hearing to hearing testify in this one. The coordination and will to pass these kinds of laws do not often come from within the states they are heard in. Rather, these bills are being pushed by organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the American Principles Project. The bills’ sponsors are rarely experts in what the bills do, and this much was clear when Senator Fuller got such a crucial fact of his own bill wrong.

The Republicans on the committee had to fall back to asking questions of their anti-trans witnesses from out of state and had no true medical witness with any organizational backing in their entire presentation. Proponents of the bill were outnumbered by those opposed 4:1. One after another, highly credentialed medical experts spoke out with the backing of organizations representing thousands of doctors, nurses, and therapists across the state. Unanimously, they all said that this bill would endanger transgender lives and would harm the doctor-patient relationship that the state holds dear. Physicians would move out of the state and not want to practice there. This was an especially important point given that Montana is experiencing a critical doctor shortage and healthcare worker shortage across the state.

The lack of medical expertise backing the proponents of the bill showed. Not only did the sponsor of the bill not know about intersex conditions, the proponents of the bill repeatedly got medical facts about transgender people mixed up or outright wrong. One Republican senator, Senator Daniel Emrich, seemed to confuse gender dysphoria with “dissociative identity disorder” and claimed that they were the same thing. A board certified psychiatrist cited the DSM-V to show that they were not, entirely shutting down that line of inquiry.

The opponents of the bill did not only have medical expertise on their side, but they also had real and lived experiences. Nearly a dozen trans youth and young adults spoke out against the bill with examples of how gender affirming care saved their lives. One trans youth, River, noted, “No one has tried to make me this way. I haven't been 'infected' by a virus. In fact its the opposite, I've had people tell me its a sin, its wrong. Being trans is not a choice or a word, it’s simply who I am, a feeling deep in my heart and soul."

One of the most powerful moments, though, was when Representative Zooey Zephyr, Montana’s first transgender woman representative, spoke out against the bill, stating "I take issue with the comment 'transition is a travesty'. My life is full of joy. I come every day excited to serve the people of Montana. … We’ll fight like hell on the house floor.” See her full speech here:

It is not known if this bill will pass in Montana. In 2021 when the bill was in the Montana House, it failed by a thin margin. This bill was noted by many experts to be more extreme than the 2021 bill. However, anti-trans panic seems to have swept the Republican party. Already we have 230 anti-trans bills proposed, surpassing any other year in history. One thing is clear though - the medical organizations, activists, and legislators opposing this bill seemed prepared for a fight and had an incredible showing. I have watched hundreds of hours of testimony and this hearing featured some of the best solidarity among the medical community. It is now up for the senate committee to table the bill or to bring it up for a full vote.