The governor exposes her bigotry

Kim Reynolds’s vision for tomorrow is yesterday or maybe the turn of the 19th century. Every time I think I’m done writing about LGBTQ issues, the governor finds a way to make that impossible. Here’s her latest: “The governor’s bill draft would put sex changes on Iowa driver’s licenses. But she insists that a driver’s license have gender at birth on it. Gov. Reynolds says that her purpose is to ‘‘protect the health of women.”

I can’t find a printable word that describes her proposal and her explanation. It is, politely, nonsense. Driver’s licenses are not penicillin or known to prevent uterine infections. She ought to be impeached for thinking we are so dumb we would believe women’s health is somehow related. What is clear, and I don’t need to get it off her driver’s license, is that she is a bigot.

Here's another report, in case you can’t believe the first: The bill would require transgender Iowans to list both their sex assigned at birth and their post-transition sex on their birth certificate when they apply to update their government documents. As last I checked, in Iowa at least, a birth certificate is not a predictive medical history.

Reynolds doesn’t even represent the better part of her party. The bill became public just one day after Republican lawmakers halted a bill that would have removed gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act.

In Iowa there are about 2.35 million driver’s licenses. There are about 2,400 transgender people here and not all have licenses. We have the second lowest number of transgender people in any state except North Dakota. (We are ahead of them in soybean production.)

I have tried to rise above my partisanship and figure out why she thinks it could possibly be needed. In my most generous moment, I can’t. I am not alone. The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa says it for me. “This is horrifying that the governor of Iowa would require transgender Iowans to put their personal and private status and history on their own driver’s licenses for anyone to see.”

Suppose I’m in an automobile accident and can’t speak. My age may be immediately important. My name and address are also useful. A call to my home will be answered by someone not confused about my sex, early or late. The hospital will deal with whatever is there, and it is no one else’s business.

The license change is part of a larger effort the governor is making to remove gender identity protection from our civil rights law. Not everyone accepts her mean-spirited effort. A House committee prudently removed the dual-gender driver’s license requirement from the bill. But many onerous provisions remain.

I think the governor should be urged to leave office for exposing herself as a governor willing to lie to members of her party, the Legislature and the public. Her efforts are not to protect women’s health. What if there were no anti-gender identity laws on the books? Would it make any difference in my straight life or yours? Not a bit.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary, and authored a memoir “From Nowhere to Somewhere.”