Kim Reynolds ignores the science in newest trans-denying bill

Opponents of a legislative effort to take away rights from Iowans had every reason to celebrate last week when all three lawmakers studying the anti-trans bill rejected it.

But a closer listen to the words of the two Republicans on the panel foreshadowed what unfolded the next day. Members of the majority party are not against punching down on transgender Iowans. They just thought the bill didn’t go about it the right way.

Enter Gov. Kim Reynolds, who now aims to enshrine an explicit echo of pro-segregation arguments in state law, while also emphasizing sex assigned at birth and rejecting inclusive use of gendered words. Her House Study Bill 649 was publicly released Thursday, and lawmakers will consider it at a hearing at noon today.

Denying Iowans’ identities won’t improve safety

LGBTQ advocates and other Iowans pounced on the proposal’s various jaw-dropping elements, such as requiring driver’s licenses for trans Iowans to list both their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity. They’ve also been asking an always-pertinent question: What problem would this solve?

Reynolds gave an answer in a prepared statement that echoes the bill’s language: “It’s unfortunate that defining a woman in code has become necessary to protect spaces where women’s health, safety, and privacy are being threatened like domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers. The bill allows the law to recognize biological differences while forbidding unfair discrimination.”

In other words, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers are powerless to keep women safe unless state law stigmatizes and permits the exclusion of trans persons.

That’s not true. Just as with school bathrooms and locker rooms, many institutions have shown it's possible to provide facilities that accommodate cisgender and transgender persons.

Reynolds strays far from the science on sex and gender identity

If the intent of Reynolds’ bill is to insert some Christian denominations’ beliefs about gender into state law, the bill, while wrongheaded, is easier to understand.

If the intent is to assert some sort of secular, immutable truth that there are boys and girls and nothing else, then Reynolds is way out of step with modern research.

Major medical associations have for years advised an approach affirming a person’s “self-expressed identity.” Critics have hypothesized that children frequently “choose” to say they are trans because of social pressure and that trans persons often regret social and physical transitions. But a 2021 paper in the Journal of Pediatrics did not find evidence of “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” and a 2021 review of other studies found that about 1% of people who’d had surgeries said they regretted it.

Reynolds’ bill, which has been in the works since October, also ignores the existence of intersex persons, who are not easily labeled “male” or “female.”

Of the lobbyists who have registered a position on House Study Bill 649, only explicitly Christian ones say they support it. In this case, going out on a limb against the tide of expert views isn’t a bold stand. It’s an unconstitutional attempt to make state law line up with specific religious views.

Use of pro-segregation language should raise alarm

The phrase “separate but equal” is commonplace shorthand for the Supreme Court’s shameful late-19th-century affirmation of racial segregation. So it’s startling to read these lines in the bill: “The term ‘equal’ does not mean ‘same’ or ‘identical’. … Separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.” No matter what its object, that language ought to summon the skepticism of all Iowans, to say nothing of the courts.

Under the bill, driver’s licenses and other identification cards would have to note if a person is transgender. “This will ultimately require transgender people to out themselves anywhere they have to present their ID,” the advocacy group One Iowa noted in a news release. Imagine such a requirement for another private characteristic — religion, for instance.

A handful of other states have passed similar laws; the effort also echoes the Trump administration’s attempt, blocked by the courts and eventually reversed by President Joe Biden in 2021, to impose a rigid definition of sex in federal law and rulemaking.

Stand up against Governor Reynolds

With Reynolds’ name behind it, this bill will be harder for legislators to reject than the attempt to strip gender identity from the state’s civil rights law. Nevertheless, lawmakers should emphatically resist this dehumanizing plan, too. It is built on specious claims, and it panders to people eager to have their dated and discriminatory views validated. It would cause Iowans to suffer, only because they are different.

Supporters of this bill aren’t standing up for truth. They’re trying to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register's editorial board: Carol Hunter, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Anti-trans legislation pushed by Kim Reynolds recalls segregation