‘Truth’ or ‘assault’ on trans Iowans? Iowans speak out on gender bill

DES MOINES — Chanting again filled and echoed the halls Monday of the Iowa Capitol for a third straight week as transgender Iowans and civil rights and LGBTQ advocates decried a bill that would define "man" and "woman" in state law, as well as require changes to birth certificates and government collection of data.

House lawmakers held a public hearing Monday evening on Gov. Kim Reynolds' proposal to change how the state addresses sex and gender identity. Reynolds’ bill would define “man” and “woman” based on a person’s sex at birth.

House File 2389 was amended and advanced last week by Republicans on the House Education Committee. They removed the part of the bill that would have required transgender Iowans to include their sex assigned at birth on their driver’s licenses. Sex change information would still be required on birth certificates.

Transgender Iowans call the proposal discriminatory, arguing it would lead to the "erasure" of transgender and nonbinary people from Iowa Code.

House Education Committee Chair Skyler Wheeler, R-Hull, paused the hearing several times to let noise subside from a large crowd of protesters, who packed the hallway outside the committee room and chanted “You will not erase us,” along with profanity.

  Buy Photo

More than 100 people were signed up to speak during the hearing, but only 24 were able to talk during the hourlong hearing. Speakers were limited to 2 minutes each and alternated between those in favor of the bill and those opposed.

Reynolds, in a statement last week, called her legislation “common sense” and said it protects women’s spaces and rights. She compared it with a state law passed in 2022 that prohibits transgender girls and women from competing in girls and women’s athletics in schools.

Supporters said women and men possess unique biological differences, and that defining a woman in code has become necessary to protect spaces for women’s health, safety and privacy that are being threatened, like domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers.

“It is legislation based on biological truth. … God created woman and man, period,” said Denise Bubeck, a member of the conservative The Family Leader Church Ambassador network. “As a grandmother of a beautiful granddaughter, I want her to grow up in a world where she is clearly defined and protected by her biological sex."

Bubeck asserted “females are losing safe spaces” while biological men are gaining access into sororities, women’s prisons, domestic violence shelters and rape centers.

“Women and girls who speak truth on biological differences of male and female are getting silenced and canceled,” she said. “This must stop. This bill does not curb the right of others; it simply makes the law recognize the biological differences between the sexes and protects their rights.”

  Buy Photo

However, requiring government-run or funded domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers to treat transgender women inconsistent with their gender identity would conflict with federal law that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and put federal funds at risk, said Max Mowitz, with the LGBTQ advocacy group One Iowa.

Both the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence are registered opposed to the bill.

LGBTQ and civil rights advocates said the bill is another broad attack on transgender Iowans, and that its use of pro-segregation language should raise alarm.

Reynolds’ bill echoes language associated with the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which declared segregation on the basis of race to be legal. The governor’s bill says the term “equal” does not mean “same” or “identical” and that “separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.”

It mentions prisons, domestic violence shelters, locker rooms, restrooms and rape crisis centers as places where people may need to be separated based on their sex assigned at birth.

Aime Wichtendahl, a Hiawatha City Council member who is Iowa's first openly transgender elected official, called the bill a “full-frontal assault” on the civil rights of transgender Iowans.

Wichtendahl and others wore pink triangles, symbolizing those sewn onto the shirts of gay men in concentration camps in Nazi Germany, while transgender Iowans and their allies chanted that Republican lawmakers advancing the bill are “fascists.”

“It is the first effort by a state government to reinstitute separate but equal since the 1960s,” she said. “And it is the most brazen effort by our governor to erase trans and queer people from Iowa.”

Wichtendahl said in the 17 years since gender identity was added to Iowa’s Civil Rights Act, there have been few to no incidents of transgender individuals or men pretending to be transgender harassing or attacking women in domestic violence shelters, locker rooms, restrooms and rape crisis centers or other places where people can be separated based on their sex at birth.

“I would ask our governor to stop gaslighting Iowans,” she said.

Breanna Young, a lawyer, said the language in the bill “is vague, confusing and it will lead to unintended consequences.”

The bill defines a “female” as “a person whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ‘ova,’” and a “male” as “a person whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”

“The term ‘woman’ or ‘girl’ refers to a female and the term ‘man’ or ‘boy’ refers to a male,” the section continues.

“Many women have reproductive conditions where their reproductive systems are not developed to produce ova,” Young told lawmakers.

“This bill specifically erases you. You are not a women anymore under this bill,” Young said.

Intersex people, who are born with sex characteristics that do not fall under male or female, as well are not explicitly mentioned in the legislation.

Bill supporter and Iowa parent Amber Williams quoted a line from the movie “Kindergarten Cop,” where a 6-year-old boy states: “Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.”

“Today, that truth is being twisted by a gender ideology experiment promoted to our children,” Williams said. “... This indoctrination has fueled identify confusion and has created a crisis that ignore two sexes are meant by divine design to be different and complimentary.”

Williams echoed Reynolds, stating: “We as women should not have to share our safe spaces with a man. Period. Ever. This not only violates our privacy, but also places our safety at risk.”

Speaker Courtney Collier said the privacy and safety of girls “are being disregarded.”

Collier said “people can choose to live in their delusions and confusions in their own lives at home, but the rest of us should not be forced to join them.”

The bill is eligible for debate and a vote on the House floor.

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com