Gender identity battles renew in Iowa

Gender identity was front and center at the Iowa Statehouse again this week as lawmakers advanced two bills to clean up messes created by toxic gender identity ideology.

ROLLING BACK PATCHWORK LOCAL ORDINANCES

House Study Bill 664 would prohibit cities and counties from passing local antidiscrimination ordinances that exceed what the state has enacted.

The bill targets ordinances passed in several cities and Johnson County prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity, less than one year after the state (rightly) saw fit to remove gender identity from state civil rights code.

To paraphrase what I wrote at the time: gender identity was the only recognized class in Iowa for which protection required acknowledging or affirming something that is inherently untrue. A woman cannot be a man, a man cannot be a woman and each cannot be neither — no matter how unpalatable that is to some.

I’m sure that when legislators added sexual orientation and gender identity to Iowa civil rights code almost two decades ago, they weren’t anticipating that it would result in post-pubertal minor females being allowed to walk around topless in front of men and boys at a public swimming pool. Or school districts telling students they could be suspended for expressing beliefs rooted in biological fact.

But that’s what residents in cities like Pella and school districts such as Linn-Mar got, while local leaders looked on helplessly. (Or perhaps fecklessly.)

I’m not usually one for the state dictating how cities and counties govern locally, but no political jurisdiction has any business forcing others to affirm what is patently untrue. If the transgender advocacy machine can’t (or won’t) grasp that, no one should be surprised if the state makes it crystal clear.

PROTECTING FOSTER PARENTS — AND FOSTER KIDS

House Study Bill 669, states that the state or its contracted agency cannot deny a foster care license to a family based wholly or in part on a family’s desire to raise a child consistent with the child’s sex. The bill also specifies that therapy to help a child cope with living life consistent with their sex is not child abuse.

Opponents of the bill call that “conversion therapy,” which they say is dangerous and discredited and will therefore harm transgender children if permitted. But they stop short of solidly defining what they say is conversion therapy, leaving everyone else to fall back on outdated perceptions of things such as electric shocks and smelling salts and other mechanisms intended to train a patient to associate their desires or attractions with pain and discomfort and shame.

Such practices are indeed barbaric — and abusive.

But the definition of conversion therapy implied by transgender activists doesn’t take into account the fact that laws and rules exist now to prevent those very abuses. The mental health professional organizations whose codes of ethics must be adhered to by practitioners in Iowa have long since rejected the aversion-type therapies from yesterday that we shudder at today.

Mental health professionals in Iowa are governed by state boards who will yank their licenses for things such as substantially deviating from appropriate standards or failing to exercise an appropriate degree of care or using unethical tactics that are “harmful and detrimental to the public,” Criminal violations carry extra severity because of the power the practitioner holds in the provider-client relationship.

None of that will change if HSB 669 becomes law. Foster parents raising kids consistent with their sex won’t supersede proper standards of care.

But apparently in the eyes of transgender activists, any parental act that doesn’t unflinchingly affirm a nine-year-old’s desired gender is conversion therapy and must be opposed.

It’s odd that the transgender advocacy machine even calls it conversion therapy, given that they champion conversion therapy of their own form: the conversion of hormones, the conversion of perfectly healthy bodies; the conversion of a whole person to a completely different identity.

Ironic, isn’t it?

WHY IS THIS NECESSARY?

Some might wonder whether Iowa Code really needs to specify that setting boundaries for gender-confused nine-year-olds isn’t child abuse. Especially since legislators acted to prohibit gender-affirming hormones and surgeries for minors back in 2023.

My first clue came in October 2023, when I received an email from someone claiming to be a licensed foster parent who said that their foster care agency was informing current and prospective licensees that they would be expected to affirm a foster child’s chosen gender identity without objections.

The anonymous sender said they and other foster parents had not expressed their reservations because the impression was that the agency — a private nonprofit that contracts with the state and determines a family’s qualifications — would withhold their licenses.

That matches what Ankeny resident Jim Florence claimed during testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee last week. Florence said that he and his wife, who have adopted two children out of foster care, were told that “we should not foster at all if we do not affirm the LGBTQ community” and alleged that their foster license was eventually “placed on hold” due to their religious beliefs.

If a family’s right to be a foster family were to hinge on arbitrary decisions shaped by one viewpoint, that’s cause for concern — not just regarding a foster family’s rights, but also their responsibilities. Iowa law obligates foster parents to make “careful and sensible parenting decisions that maintain the health, safety, and best interests of a child” while encouraging their growth and development.

Some families feel that arbitrarily affirming gender identity will interfere with those obligations.

FOSTER CHILDREN MORE LIKELY TO HAVE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES

The growth and development of foster children is more likely to involve therapeutic intervention. Research has frequently shown that kids in foster care are significantly more likely to experience mental health issues such as anxiety and depression and neurodevelopmental issues such as autism and ADHD.

Importantly, studies have also shown that kids with autism and ADHD are more likely to report gender variance.

Given the overlap, it makes sense that some foster parents would be hesitant to treat their foster kid’s perceived transgender identity as simply innate. A foster care licensing agency shouldn’t be blocking foster parents from opting to treat it as potentially part of a larger cohort of mental health issues.

If licensing agencies can (or won’t) differentiate between legitimate mental health care and child abuse, one should not be surprised when lawmakers do it for them. And that’s where we are today.

Kids need adults in their lives who set boundaries for them. They need the presence of authority. Giving a nine-year-old the power to dictate the words and actions of their adult guardians does not merely weaken their boundaries and their understanding of authority. It denies them stability and security that is especially precious to a kid growing up in “the system.”

The system, already facing the strain of shortages, needs good families to step up and offer care. Fewer might answer the call if they think doing what they believe is best for the child will cost them their license.

Voted through committee, the two bills from last week now head to the House floor for full passage.

They shouldn’t be needed. All of the things they address could be resolved with a modicum of common sense. But in the absence of such, sometimes legislation is the next best thing.

Comments: 319-343-8222; althea.cole.writer@gmail.com