Iowa legislators work, but not for us

Have you heard about the roving bands of transgenders and gays invading our schools and trying to convert our children?

Neither have I. But our governor and state legislature must be afraid of that or something even more sinister. It took the Iowa Republican state legislature less than an hour to remove gender identity protections, including state civil rights protections based on gender.

Gov. Kim Reynolds not only approved this legislation, she also signed legislation that bans classroom discussions that touch on LGBT+ topics in K-6 and requires schools to forcibly “out” transgender students.

It is now the law to “out” these children. This sounds like a frightening way to discriminate and invite bullies to pick on these children and have teachers treat them differently.

So much for equal protection for all. As if they had complete control of their genetics.

Personally, I have watched a grade school transgender girl from our church grow up and become an adult. The confusion and frustration this poor child had is something most people against transgenders have never seen.

I gave her guitar lessons at an early age, before she realized she was different. Her mother was a good friend of our family, so I know them and the situation quite well.

At an early age she preferred boy’s clothes rather than appropriate clothes for her sex. None of us thought much about that at the time.

As she matured, she realized she was somehow different from the other kids. She had more interest in girls than boys, and at eighteen started hormone treatment and later had gender reassignment surgery.

This probably sounds like a typical transgender story. What isn’t obvious is the confusion and pain of being different. This little girl wasn’t exposed to trans in any way, yet before our eyes, she transitions from a girl to a boy.

The pressure of societal norms caused great emotional damage. She became suicidal at several points in her life. Her parents were supportive as were her close friends.

She/he was a good kid and caused no harm to anyone either as a child or an adult. She is much more comfortable as an adult after having gone through the trauma of being different. She is married to a woman, and they have a child.

They seem to be very happy.

Iowa has 106,000 (3.6%) trans people, overall; the United States has 1,331,900 and the armed forces has 15,450. These are not small numbers when you consider both the state of Iowa and the federal government taking away any protections that have been law for many years.

The Trump administration is working on getting rid of all transgenders in the armed services in spite of all of the Chiefs of Staff saying there have been no negative impacts on readiness.

This seems very short-sighted and counter productive to our desire to increase recruitment. That is over 15,000 people out of work and a shortage of over 15,000 productive members of the armed forces.

They are being discriminated against for no good reason, only that the Trump administration says there are only two sexes.