Fern Feather is a transgender Vermont homicide victim killed by an "intimate partner or associate" last week in Morristown.  Extremist progressives have sought to connect Fern's death with parental concerns about exposing young children to gender hormone therapies and controversial sex education materials.  This "trans-truth" transcends truth, logic, and even human decency in its shallow effort to seed yet more identity hatred.

Progressive Vermont legislators pounced on this tragedy to agitate and divide, unjustifiably alleging that this crime was an anti-trans hate crime fueled by GOP policies.  The facts suggest that the victim and assailant spent several days together, reflecting a personal relationship gone sour — the cause of the majority of trans-homicides:

[B]etween 2013 and 2021, approximately two thirds of transgender and gender non-conforming people with known killers had their lives taken by an acquaintance, friend, family member or intimate partner.

Two Vermont legislators launched a rally on a local social media platform:

We wanted to let you know about an important rally to express solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community — and outrage at the murder of Fern Feather in Morristown. Over the last week, the Vermont GOP has centered anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in their fundraising efforts taking out ads on social media targeting specific legislators who have supported gender-affirming care for LGBTQ youth. Fern Feather's murder, and these recent political attacks have contributed to widespread fear and anxiety within our trans and LGBTQ community.

This is the modus operandi of Identity Politics: truth doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter whether this was a hate crime — it is weaponized solely on the political identity of the victim, reducing Fern to nothing but a post-mortem pawn.  It is joined to a second, bigger lie: that those who support behind-the-parents'-backs legislation "have supported gender-affirming care for LGBTQ youth."

As one writer explained, alienating children from parents during gender transition is the most harmful thing that can be done to them:

[S]ocial transition — assuming a new identity ... is actually a serious mental health treatment and a "huge decision" that should be made by the family, said Dr. Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist specializing in gender, who is trans herself. Secret social transition is, essentially, performing a psychological intervention without parental knowledge or permission[.] ... [T]here is also a culture of parental demonization at work here, in the form of a narrative, oft-repeated by organizations like the Trevor Project and adopted in schools, that parents are potentially dangerous, denying treatment out of bigotry rather than concern for their children's mental health.

(The Trevor Project is invoked as an authority in Vermont's H.659.)

A myriad of potential physical harms can accompany these hormones, as recounted in the consent forms — cancer, infertility, diabetes, heart and liver disease, stroke, and others yet unknown.  To widely expose children as ideological gender "theory" guinea pigs to such drugs is Mengelian, and to sneak around conspiring with children against their parents inflicts its own harm.

To shift attention away from these facts, Vermont's extremists exploited a horrid murder to posture a "Fern rally" that was never for Fern.  Responding to a constituent who raised these concerns, Representative Tiffany Bluemle wrote:

[T]he rally yesterday was an expression of love for those who have been recently harmed by anti LGBTQ+ hatred; hence the appearance of rainbow flags. I'm not sure what you are trying to say about Gabrielle [Stebbins] and me, but hope that you do not condone the particular violence and political harm that has occurred over the past two weeks.

These legislators have not defined any "particular violence and political harm," only vague allusions to "anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric" — understandable concerns by parents about the highly offensive indoctrination of their young children with a political gender "theory." 

It is questionable whether any of these legislators have ever studied the science of gender hormone therapy.  Vermont lieutenant governor candidate Dave Zuckerman claims that parents who object to these "therapies" are hateful bigots.  In a recent email to a constituent, Zuckerman supports granting prepubescent children hormone therapy without parental consent (H.659):

David does support this bill. It's so important that we make trans-inclusive healthcare accessible to everyone in the state. Adolescence is already hard enough, and for trans kids who are struggling to be comfortable in their bodies, being denied life-saving medical care is unconscionable

Fern Feather has been shamelessly manipulated as a political pawn.  Similarly, Vermont schoolchildren have been enlisted as gender-theory guinea pigs in controversial, inadequately tested hormone therapy for young kids.

Vermont's progressive leadership falsely attributed hate motives to a terrible crime to attack those raising the alarm to protect children.  Interfering with parental relationships is serious business: deliberately obfuscating facts using "trans-truth" tactics will not deflect parents from the realization of what is already being done to their children.

Image: Arrian Jahangiri.