Thankfully, the tide appears to be ebbing on the Great Statehouse Trans PANIC! of 2025. It’s been days since the Vermont Daily Chronicle could gin up any fresh angles on the ridiculous story. Which, as a reminder, featured a group of Christian conservatives whining — inaccurately — that their free speech rights had been trampled by a handful of trans folk dancing around a Statehouse meeting room. As we previously noted, there is no First Amendment right to deliver speech in a given location or on a given medium.

But before we consign this fiasco to the dustbin of history, we should take note of two particularly ridiculous attempts to exploit this mildest of contretemps. First, a tiny extremist “parental rights” group unwittingly exposing the absurdity of its own claims. And second, the head of the Vermont Republican Party claiming that state lawmakers have a solemn duty to maintain a perfect attendance record.

This will involve a bit of exposure to the rantings of SPEAKVT, a group of far-right rabble-rousers in the Essex-Westford school district. The group’s president Marie Tiemann put out a statement about the March 12 “detransitioning” event sponsored by SPEAKVT and the Vermont Family Alliance. Funny thing, her statement is kind of a self-own.

When we arrived to occupy the reserved room, we discovered that our space had been completely sabotaged by a group from the Rainbow Bridge Community Center. They had placed flyers on seats, set up a portable microphone and speakers, and played loud music. They were loud, rude, and boisterous and would not let us speak. There were about 8-10 of them in the room. Four or five of them pranced around the room in bizarre attire, pounded on the tables, and spoke loudly.

Hmm. “completely sabotaged” by FLYERS, you say? I would have expected maybe some glitter-bomb spray paint.

“There were about 8-10 of them… Four or five of them pranced around the room…”

Wow. What overwhelming force. I am shocked that this bunch of ride-or-die patriots would allow themselves to be defeated by a force you could count on the fingers of two hands. (Half of them PRANCING.) I mean, how many SPEAKers and VFAers were in the room? Did they just sit there and let the prancing go on?

It’s like when Washington and his forces had to abandon Philadelphia after being whipped at the Battle of Brandywine by the British Army’s Morris dancing troupe.

Oh wait, that didn’t happen.

Okay, let’s turn our attention to VTGOP Chair Paul Dame’s overheated effort to tar and feather four Democratic lawmakers for actually doing something besides attend every single session of the Legislature. I don’t know which universe he resides in, but in this one, it’s extremely rare for all 180 lawmakers to be in attendance on any single day. Caucus leaders have to be very careful to make sure their members are on hand for crucial votes, because otherwise there would surely be some absences. And lawmakers aren’t required to bring a signed note from their parents to explain why they weren’t there on a given Wednesday afternoon.

The objects of Dame’s ire: Reps. Mari Cordes and Jubilee McGill, previously discussed, for allegedly “coordinating” the disruption of the VFA event — by deliberately and with malice aforethought writing posts on a Facebook page. Well within their pesky First Amendment rights, I fear.

Cordes and McGill have now been joined in Dame’s tumbrel by Rep. Kate Logan and Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky.

Logan not only absented herself from the Statehouse on March 12, she committed a peaceful act of civil disobedience and got herself arrested at a protest in Washington, D.C. This expression of her, ahem, First Amendment rights threw Dame into a tizzy. He noted that Logan was the second elected Democrat to be arrested in the past 13 months, a sign that Vermont Democrats were becoming “a lawless party.” (It must be noted that Logan brands herself a “Progressive/Democrat,” which means her primary allegiance is with the Progs not the Dems, but Dame is not great with details.)

Vyhovsky’s sin: Traveling to Europe for events sponsored by the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. Vyhovsky is of Ukrainian descent, so you might understand if she wants to make her voice heard at a time when her homeland is under attack by Russian kleptocrat Vladimir Putin. But Dame is having none of it. Then again, he’s long had a bug up his posterior about Vyhovsky, who dares to be young, female, and ardently Progressive — and more to the point, dares to keep on winning elections.

Does he even believe the stuff he’s peddling? I doubt it. He’s just trying to find any excuse to bash Democrats — and it always seems to be Democratic women. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

It’s pretty obvious that the Vermont Republican Party contains a broad streak of misogyny. Whenever Republicans get a choice between a male candidate and a female, they almost inevitably choose the former. The Republican legislative caucuses include 53 men and only 14 women, for starters. Then there was the “head-scratcher” 2022 Republican primary in which Gerald Malloy, then an unknown recent arrival to Vermont, somehow managed to beat former U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan, and Not Even a Republican Liam Madden won the GOP primary over two actual Republican women, Anya Tynio and Ericka Redic.

Maybe this is why the whole transgender thing sends them into such a PANIC. Their entire world order seems to be based around the presence or absence of wedding tackle. The idea of gender ambiguity or — horrors! — someone born male deciding they are happier living as a female — is just alien to their way of thinking about the human race.

It’d be nice if someone asked Gov. Phil Scott what he thinks of all this overheated rhetoric. He’d probably shrug it off by claiming that he has nothing to do with the VTGOP. Problem is, that doesn’t fly anymore, not after he deeply involved himself in the 2024 campaign on behalf of Republican legislative candidates, including quite a few deeply conservative ones. He appeared alongside Republicans, he publicly endorsed them, and his campaign conducted polling that almost certainly informed the Barons of Burlington’s massive expenditures on behalf of key Republican hopefuls.

It worked. The Republicans won a bunch of races with Phil Scott’s direct help. But that means he can no longer claim to have no relationship with the party. He is deeply tied to the VTGOP, with all the extremism, sexism, and transgender PANIC that comes along with the package.