by Travis Mateer
I’m a little embarrassed to say yesterday was the first time I actually stepped inside Montana’s Capitol building, but it was, and my very gracious tour-guide endured a black mood no amount of golden sun streaming through glorious stained-glass windows could break.
The mood was all mine and no one else is responsible for it. I could bitch and moan about dark political forces ripping this nation apart, giving as an example my own kid temporarily losing a friend over an argument about Trump (they are 12), but what would that accomplish?
I was thinking a lot about kids during yesterday’s official beginning of Montana’s 68th legislative session. Mostly I was trying not to be sad about my own personal situation, but that line of thinking quickly bleeds into one of the subjects that is sure to take up A LOT of oxygen during this 4 month charade, and that’s the stupid culture-war topic of drag shows.
I have enough cultural disdain built up against ALL sides at this point, because no one is doing a good job keeping youngsters from getting culturally chewed up, myself included, so any time that’s spent discussing the merits of drag shows for children is a waste of time, in my opinion. But it sure will make for some attention getting headlines!
The start of the legislative session seemed like a mostly happy affair. The gallery was packed and plenty of kids ran around, their exuberance echoing in the large spaces where our laws are made. Where are the figurative vampires, I wondered. Where are the dangerous adults who don’t (or can’t) consider the damage they do to others as they seek power?
Young people face more challenges to their mental health than I can fathom, and though I’d like to think it wasn’t all that long ago that I was a young person (I’m 44), I’ll be the first to acknowledge the world I grew up in is long gone.
Maybe it’s this line of thinking, along with seeing a certain state Senator doing her thing, that got me thinking about a young life that ended too early in 2019.
While I spoke with two people at Forward Montana a few years ago about this tragic situation with their colleague, I decided to drop the inquiry into the circumstances surrounding her death.
Instead of thinking of a young person who is no longer alive, I spent some time thinking about how I was going to write about a youngster who allowed his connection to the filming of the popular show, Yellowstone, identify who his daddy is.
I’ll keep it brief, with hopefully no identifiers, and simply say that Montana may be a BIG state, geographically speaking, but the degrees that seem to separate the people in this state remain small.
Nothing seems small inside Montana’s Capitol, including the ambitions of Montana’s first transgender representative. NPR was already enjoying the headline-splashing before the session began, with this article about the scary GOP majority Zooey Zephyr will face. From the link (emphasis mine):
Zooey Zephyr is familiar with the ornate halls of the Montana state Capitol. She was here during the 2021 legislative session, testifying in opposition to bills targeted at trans-Montanans, like a ban on trans women and girls from participating in women’s sports.
“The image of ‘quote’ trans women ruining the integrity of women’s sports paints a false picture of life as a trans woman,” she said in the House Judiciary Committee. “It incorrectly claims that we have a competitive advantage. And it misses why trans people transition in the first place – which is to lead a happier life,” Zephyr added.
Ok, but here’s a question I would want to ask, especially as a parent: what happens if transitioning DOES NOT lead to a happier life? If we’re using happiness as a metric, what is it about our culture that’s leading so many young people to be clinically unhappy, to the point of suicidal crisis?
There is something much deeper going on with young people growing up in today’s screen-mediated world, and I say that as a parent who often feels powerless to mitigate the cultural toxicity they are absorbing daily.
What kind of toxicity will the 68th legislative session add to the discourse? Since Democrats have virtually no power, I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot of empty noise from their side, and from the other side, I suspect we’ll be getting all kinds of pet-project bullshit. If, by some chance, real work gets done to actually improve the average person’s life, I’ll make sure to let readers know.
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