BUTTE — Some people are upset over the cancellation of a transgender speaker at the Butte Public Library last week.
“Every trans activist, every LGBTQ activist is like, ‘Well, the thing we said was going happen that you said wasn’t going to happen—happened.’ But I didn’t expect it to happen to me,” said Adria Jawort, whose planned talk on the history of the Two-Spirit People in Montana at the library’s First Fridays series was canceled last Thursday.
“It’s like, we said these bills could be used to target trans people—‘Oh, no it won’t’,” she added.
Butte-Silver Bow ordered the cancellation of Jawort’s speech out of fear that it violated Montana House Bill 359. But some citizens and librarians object to the city-county’s actions, saying it caved to pressure.
“Well, I was angered that a group of right-wing extremists—White Lives Matter—claimed that they intimidated Butte, essentially, the citizens of Butte, to not have something that involved freedom of speech go on,” said Butte resident Evan Barrett.
The library director says there is nothing inappropriate about Jawort’s lecture.
“As we understood, it was an event promoted toward an adult audience; it was not a kids’ story hour. Again, Ms. Jawort is not categorized as a drag queen. We just thought it was an interesting topic,” Library Director Stef Johnson said.
Plans are in the works for a rally on the Butte courthouse steps on Thursday at 3:30 p.m., and Jawort says she is going to try to attend.
“My number-one tool to combat this bigotry and ignorance is education, so here I have a seemingly bigger platform. So I guess that’s is the silver lining on this,” Jawort said.
The Butte Public Library posted a video on Monday in response to the cancellation of Jawort's talk:
