FILE - Rep. Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, walks out of the Montana House of Representatives after lawmakers voted to ban her from the chamber on April 26, 2023, in the State Capitol in Helena, Mont. Zephyr and legislative researcher Erin Reed have emerged as a power couple spreading hope to fellow transgender people. (Thom Bridge/Independent Record via AP, File)

MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — Zooey Zephyr and Erin Reed walk hand in hand at a Pride parade in the college town of Missoula, Montana, wearing smiles as sunny as the day is rainy. Adoring fans cheer them along the route.

Reed stops and raises a small Pride flag. Zephyr cups her hands together in a heart over her chest in appreciation. Zephyr, a transgender state lawmaker, later gives a speech to hundreds attending the event. Tears well in people's eyes as they speak with the couple afterward.

Sage Scarborough hugs a book and grins after getting Zephyr’s autograph.

“I feel like it makes us as a generation feel represented when we have people like her in power and up there giving very inspirational, motivational words of wisdom,” says Scarborough, 20.

Zephyr and Reed, both 34, have emerged as a vanguard, a power couple spreading hope to fellow transgender people amid a year in which hundreds of bills were proposed or passed that restrict their rights in health care and other realms. Their appearances at Pride events this month throughout the country replicate scenes like the one in Missoula.

Largely unknown just a few months ago, the two women now rate among the most prominent figures in the world of LGBTQ+ advocacy. They've appeared at dozens of events, including the GLAAD Media Awards in New York City in May. People lined up to meet them after speaking in Florida, Ohio and Los Angeles, and even recognized them during their recent trip to Glacier National Park. Documentary film crews follow them around. They recently rubbed elbows at a bar in the nation's capital with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, during Pride festivities.

Their rise in prominence has also made them a lightning rod for criticism and vitriol that’s emblematic of the larger divisions around LGBTQ+ issues in the United States. Debates rage in statehouses over any number of related issues — whether transgender girls should be allowed to compete in female sports, if parents have a right to know when their children start going by a gender identity at school or if young children should be banned from taking hormone blockers.

Zephyr, a Democrat, surged into the spotlight this spring when she was silenced by her Republican colleagues in the Montana Legislature after she refused to apologize for saying some lawmakers would have blood on their hands for supporting a ban on gender-affirming health for youth. GOP state leaders called her words “hateful rhetoric” and condemned her for leading a protest with supporters that brought a legislative session to a temporary halt.

A conservative caucus also repeatedly and deliberately referred to Zephyr with masculine pronouns while also suggesting her actions were “nothing more than an ego trip.”

Reed watched it all unfold from her home in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where she has cemented herself as one of the nation's leading independent researchers monitoring the torrent of anti-LGBTQ+ bills. In that role, she is a frequent recipient of online vitriol and both women have experienced “swatting” attempts, in which someone made a false report to law enforcement to try to draw armed officers to their homes.

“The question I’ve been asked a thousand, thousand times is, ‘Are you OK? How are you holding up?’” Zephyr said at Missoula Pride in June. “I can say honestly with all my heart, I have a lightness in the work and a joy and hope that I have not felt in a long time."

Zephyr adds that she has "seen the response in individuals coming up to me in the quiet corners of the Capitol, saying, ‘We see you, we know what’s happening, this isn’t right, we have to stay quiet, but this isn’t right.’”

She plans to run for reelection to the Montana House and says she is “willing to explore” the possibility of holding other public offices in the future. Some supporters have pitched her running for Congress to represent western Montana, and while she hasn't ruled it out, Zephyr says, her immediate focus is finding “rooms that my voice can do good in.”

Zephyr appeared on “The View,” visited the White House and was featured at the Pride Night for the Seattle Sounders in the past month. Reed circulates a policy newsletter and has amassed a following of more than 400,000 on TikTok, where she posts videos about legislation and encourages other trans people to testify in legislatures.

“It’s like having trans guardian angels,” Cam Ogden, a 23-year-old trans woman, says.

Ogden, a college student in Columbus, Ohio, did not intend to become an activist when she started sitting in on committee meetings at the state legislature in 2021 to learn about the bills affecting her life.

Reed first spotted Ogden on the legislature’s live feed, rolling her eyes in the back of the room as lawmakers spread falsehoods about gender-affirming care. The two connected on social media and became fast friends. But when a legislator outed Ogden as transgender at a public meeting after a closed-door conversation, Reed and Zephyr jumped in as mentors as Ogden navigated her leap into activism — and the harassment that came with it.

Reed says, “People come up to us and say, ‘Thank you, you really helped me understand.’ Or, ‘Thank you, you really helped me explain things to my mom.’ And sometimes the mom will be there and will agree and nod.”

Reed and Zephyr's romantic relationship has augmented their political activism from the start.

They met online in 2022 while organizing a response to a move by Texas to investigate parents of transgender youths, and trans advocacy remains a focal point in their lives. They started dating long-distance between Montana and Maryland, often falling asleep and waking up while still on a video chat.

Reed now shares what she learns about national legislative trends with Zephyr to help frame her understanding of Montana bills. And Zephyr says that because she works across issues, she can easily identify how language used to advance anti-LGBTQ+ legislation mirrors that on abortion restrictions, intelligence she then shares with Reed.

“My god, we click so well professionally and personally,” Reed says.

They have held each other up through those hard times, with a shared understanding of the unique challenges they face at the intersection of politics and personal identity. Reed, Zephyr says, was a vital source of support when she was silenced and then banned from the Montana House floor toward the end of the legislative session. The negativity that their opponents cast on them is now overshadowed by overwhelming support, Reed says: “Our joy is our resistance.”

During a trip Reed made to Montana in May after the legislative session concluded, the couple got engaged at a “queer prom” in Missoula, surrounded by their biggest supporters. Zephyr, who proposed on one knee, felt compelled by everything she had just endured.

Their living arrangements are to be determined; Reed has a 7-year-old son. They’ll make wedding plans after Pride Month ends. And they don’t plan to elope, Zephyr says.

It’ll be “a nice, big, queer wedding,” Reed says. “It’s going to be wonderful.”

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Costley reported from Washington, D.C., and Schoenbaum from Raleigh, North Carolina.

News from © The Associated Press, 2023