Two days after transgender activists disrupted a peaceful, educational National Detransitioning Awareness Day event at the Vermont State House, and one day after the Senate and House (Democrat) Majority Leaders blamed the Vermont Family Alliance event organizers for their “attack” on trans rights, the VFA is demanding an apology.
VDC’s video footage of biological males dressed in women’s clothing singing and shouting in Room 11 so loud as to make VFA speaker Renee McGuinness inaudible was aired Wednesday afternoon by VDC and rebroadcast on major online media such as Libs of Tik Tok and, last night, on the Fox News program Jesse Waters Primetime. This morning Fox News published a news story with the VDC footage and an extensive interview with Chloe Cole, the nation’s highest profile detransitioned young person and detransitioning advocate.
Sergeant-At-Arms Agatha Kessler at no time asked the disrupters to stop or leave, and instead announced she would clear the room in five minutes in the disturbance didn’t stop. It didn’t and the meeting was shut down.
As upsetting as the disruption of the long-planned event, and Kessler’s approach to stopping it, was for McGuinness, she was even more upset by the condemnation of her organization in Vermont Democrat Party public statements.
A March 12 Vermont Democrat Party statement declared in a headline that “Vermont Senate and House Democrats Reject Today’s Attacks on Transgender Community.” Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale and House Majority Leader Lori Houghton were quoted at length in the press statement.
“I would like to see a public apology from Vermont Senate and House Democrats for mischaracterizing our event as an attack on the transgender community,” Rene McGuinness, Public Policy Analyst for the Vermont Family Alliance, said. “Our first amendment free speech rights were denied, while disruptors were granted the special privilege to use the room we had booked for 15 minutes by the Office of the Sergeant at Arms, Agatha Kessler. This spectacle made national news. It was a shameful display of lack of decorum in our State House.”
This morning, Kessler approached VDC in the State House cafeteria and told me how “disappointed” she was in our coverage. I asked her why. She repeated that she was “disappointed” and when pressed said it was due to “misinformation.” Asked to explain details, she declined, repeated that she was disappointed, and departed.
VDC will gladly publish any added comments by Kessler, and any response by Ram or Houghton to McGuinness’s request for an apology.
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