Butte-Silver Bow cancels library event with trans speaker citing new drag story hour ban
The event did not involve drag. It was to feature Adria Jawort, a Billings-based trans/Two Spirit writer who has a blog in which she writes about the LGBTQ+ community and extremism in Montana.
Jawort said in an interview she was slated to talk for about 45 minutes about the history of transgender and Two Spirit people in America and the West. She said she was originally invited by Humanities Montana for a paid gig but after recent news stories about appointee Jeremy Carl, she planned to pay her own way to get to the event.
“Basically, what I always say is to show that transgender and Two Spirit people have existed in America since time immemorial, then I just kind of go through the history of the conquistadores, who came across them and used it as an excuse to kill entire tribes,” she said. “Then going up to California and the West and how colonization really tried to erase us – and still are, apparently.”
She said she received an email from a library employee Thursday morning that said the library was cancelling the event on the advice of the chief executive and county attorney “with deepest regret.”
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HB 359, which was sponsored by Rep. Braxton Mitchell, R-Columbia Falls, bans drag performances on public property and prohibits drag story hours – in which drag queens or kings read books to children – at libraries and schools. Violations of the law include fines of up to $5,000.
It was one of the most controversial bills of the 2023 session, as Mitchell and some Republicans consistently characterized drag performances as being sexual in nature, and was one of several that went after LGBTQ+ rights on the basis of what those Republicans said was “protecting children.”
Many people staunchly disagreed in their legislative testimony and said the bill and others were simply blatant attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and their personal freedoms. The bill was gutted in the Senate, but stricter language was put back into it before it was sent to the governor, who signed the bill earlier this month.
Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a Democratic trans lawmaker from Missoula, had told lawmakers the bill would target the trans community in addition to drag performers, but House Majority Leader Sue Vinton, R-Billings, replied to her in February: “This bill has nothing to do with the transgender community.”
Jawort said she was among the people who testified against the bill during the legislative session and tried to tell lawmakers that trans people would get looped into the drag performances bill. She also performed at a drag show in Helena in February as part of the Montana Pride Former Felon’s Ball.
In the interview Thursday, Jawort compared the new law to masquerade laws that led to the Stonewall Riots in 1969 in New York – calling the Montana law “a 21st Century version of that.”
“People thought we were being reactionary. ‘Oh, they wouldn’t target trans people; it wouldn’t target trans people.’ And I said, well technically it could. And lo and behold, there I was, like the first.” she said. “It was kind of shocking that what we were saying became literally true. But at the same time, we’re just shrugging, saying, ‘See, we told you so.’”
The cancellation of the event in Butte appears to be the first involving the new law that Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed on May 22 and does involve a trans person.
Butte-Silver Bow County is represented by five Republicans and five Democrats in the legislature. Sen. Terry Vermeire, R-Anaconda, was the only one of them to support HB 359 on final passage in the respective chambers.