Tag Archives: Vermont Family Alliance

Let’s Take a Moment to Marvel at the Dispassionate Reasoning of Vermont Conservatives

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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.

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PANIC! At the Statehouse

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You know the funny thing about all those conservatives who carry pocket Constitutions everywhere they go, many of whom revere our founding document as divinely inspired?

The funny thing is, they have no idea what the First Amendment says or means. Are those pocket Constitutions ever actually read, or are they just fetish objects?

Latest example: The ongoing kerfuffle over a March 12 incident at the Statehouse, in which an event sponsored by the far-right Vermont Family Alliance was interrupted by a handful of dancing transgender folk. (To judge by available footage, it was the mildest, most unthreatening “disruption” I have ever seen in my life.) Eventually the meeting was shut down by the Sergeant at Arms. Conservatives instantly went into full tizzy mode over the trans folk’s alleged interference with VFA’s First Amendment rights.

I haven’t addressed this before because I thought it would go away (as it should), but the right-wing echo machine has cranked itself up to eleven. So I guess I have to explain this. Slowly.

The First Amendment guarantees your right of free speech. It does not guarantee your right to a particular platform. There is no Constitutional right to hold an event in Room 11 of the Statehouse, just as there is no Constitutional right to express your views in the pages of the New York Times or on a given social media platform or on a specific streetcorner or in a crowded theater.

The VFA folks could have gone out in the hall or out on the front lawn. Or anywhere. They didn’t have to be deterred by a few counter-protesters dancing around. Which, from available video evidence, is absolutely all they did.

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Phil’s Friends: A Homegrown Mom for Liberty

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As noted previously, Gov. Phil Scott and former gov Jim Douglas were scheduled to hold a meet ‘n greet this evening for Republican legislative candidates in Addison County. They’ll be lending their names and “moderate” reputations to a passel of far-right hopefuls with, um, no hope of winning in a deep blue county.

Take Renee McGuinness, pictured above. Please, take her.

McGuinness is one of two Republican candidates in the very Democratic Addison-4 district, currently repped by Mari Cordes and Caleb Elder. It last elected a Republican in 2016, and the two incumbents cruised to re-election in 2022 by a wide margin. (Elder made an unsuccessful bid for state senate this year; Herb Olson joins Cordes on this year’s Democratic ticket.)

McGuinness is known in Statehouse circles as an advocate for the Vermont Family Alliance, a very conservative organization aligned, in worldview at least, with the notorious Moms for Liberty, which seems to be plummeting earthward after a brief ascent to political influence in Ron DeSantis’ Florida. MFL has been identified as “extremist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Doubtless VFA is too small to have attracted SPLC’s notice.

VFA touts itself as a parental rights group, fighting against government intrusion into parents’ “natural right to make decisions” about their children’s upbringing. Which sounds kind of benign on the surface, but their idea of government intrusion is pretty darn broad.

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