TWIBS: Laurel Libby Censured After “Reprehensible” Behavior
Maine House Rep Laurel Libby (R) has been censured, or prohibited from speaking on the floor of the House or voting, until she apologizes for posting pictures of and dead naming a trans minor in a viral Facebook post.
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Put another mark in the W column for liberals in the cultural tug-of-war the transgender community is being used for: Republican Representative Laurel Libby was censured in a 75-70 party line vote in Maine’s Democrat-controlled house on Tuesday. Why? Because on the 17th, Libby posted a picture of a Maine transgender student athlete to Facebook and dead named her to more than 100,000 people.
I won’t link to that post here to avoid spreading the information any further, considering the transgender girl in question is a minor.
The real kicker here is that Libby could end her censuring at any time… by simply apologizing for this obvious and glaring misstep. Montana State Representative Zooey Zephyr certainly wasn’t extended that sort of magnanimity when she was first silenced and then censured for speaking out against a bill that would gravely harm her constituents.
Libby, unsurprisingly, refuses to apologize. She claims that Maine House Democrats simply want to silence her for speaking out in defense of girls (but only the right kind of girls, of course), and despite alleging that she’s been “canceled,” Libby told Fox News that she was “exploring options” because she believes that her censuring was not constitutional.
Even some of Libby’s colleagues, despite voting no on her censuring, spoke out against her behavior.
“My colleague made an error in judgement by posting images of a minor to push a policy agenda,” said Representative David Boyer, a Republican, on Facebook. “This was reprehensible. We should be able to advocate policy without making kids political footballs.”
Though Boyer’s correct that Libby’s actions were reprehensible, it’s almost staggering how little self-awareness he displays in condemning the use of children as political footballs. I can think of no other way to frame what the Republican party and their president have been doing to trans children for years now.
Speaking of the president, this debacle has, unfortunately, caught his attention. You see, Libby’s initial complaint and inspiration to share the name and face of an innocent young trans girl to over one hundred thousand unhinged bigots on the internet was Trump’s February 5th executive order yet again redefining Title IX to exclude trans students from gender-based discrimination and ban them from competing in school sports at any institution that receives federal funding.
Now, Trump is gunning for Maine over a single trans girl.
“I hate to tell you this, but we’re not going to give them any federal money … until they clean that up,” the president said at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Washington last Thursday. It’s unclear whether or not Trump plans to halt all federal funding to the state of Maine over one girl, or whether he plans to do anything at all, as is often the case when he huffs and puffs in front of a crowd or camera.
Maine’s governing body for high school sports, however, refuses to capitulate, because Trump’s executive order conflicts with state anti-discrimination laws that include protections for transgender people.
“The executive order and our Maine state Human Rights Act are in conflict, and the Maine Principal’s Association will continue to follow state law as it pertains to gender identity,” Mike Burnham, the executive director of the organization, said to Maine Public Radio this month.
Well, it’s nice to see somebody with a backbone these days.
Who will win in this game of chicken over a small subgroup of a small subgroup of a small subgroup of Americans? What dastardly tricks does Laurel Libby have up her sleeve regarding her censuring? Will a single transgender girl competing in pole vaulting unravel the very fabric of American society?
Only time will tell, dear reader.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a trans woman journalist who reports on news relevant to the queer community and occasionally posts on BlueSky.
