The Pride parade is in full swing in Missoula this Saturday in June. In this small town in Montana, which inspired writers of the Far West, everyone feasts quietly and tours the rainbow-colored stands. Suddenly, at 4:30 p.m., silence falls. On stage, Zooey Zephyr has just spoken. At 34, she is the elected transgender of this very progressive constituency in the very conservative Parliament of Montana.
The Democrat is attacking the Republicans, who passed a law at the end of April banning hormone treatments and surgery for transgender minors and expelled her from Parliament. She thanks her city: “Missoula hugged me when I transitioned”and claims his fight for the LGBT+ community: “What they can’t take away from us is our pride and our joy. » At the end of her performance, Zooey Zephyr, filmed by a documentary filmmaker, signs autographs to the crowd of her supporters. A star is born. Thanks to the Republicans.
Everything is tied on April 18, during a debate on the law devoted to transgender minors. The MP harangues her colleagues. “If you pass this law, I hope the next time you bow your heads to pray, you will see the blood on your hands”, she says in reference to the suicides of LGBT+ people. Outcry among the Republicans, who consider themselves insulted and decide to cut the microphone to the elected official. However, the latter retains the right to vote. A few days later, Parliament is invaded by supporters of Zooey Zephir who claim: “Let her talk! » This time she was banned from parliament until the end of the session on May 5.
Zooey Zephir becomes the progressive muse of Montana, invited everywhere, including on the lawns of the White House. This state with a population of one million, as large as half of France, becomes the new epicenter of the “cultural war” which tears the United States apart and focuses on the fate of transgender people, sixteen months before the presidential election.
Moderate state for a long time
Zooey Zephir, who made her transition in 2018 in a New York hospital, explains her journey, alongside her fiancée, Erin Reed, an activist journalist, also transgender. In early May, his marriage proposal, kneeling, at the party organized by the queer community in Missoula, spread on social networks. His girlfriend had a little boy, now 7, with a woman from a previous marriage. “I am a mother-in-law”summarizes Zooey.
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