Iowa: Today, voted down a bill to remove gender identity as a civil right

Erin Reed published an update a few minutes ago:

Today, in Iowa, Representative Jeff Shipley sponsored an anti-trans bill (House Bill 2082). At the state Capitol, he "began with an incendiary tirade against transgender people, labeling transgender women as 'creepy old men,'" and his primary witness claimed that trans women will spread bodily fluids and assault children in women's bathrooms.

This is what scaremongering is. This is what moral panic is.

Unfortunately, this is normal for Republicans.

What really got my attention in Reed's article was that Shipley referred to Iowa Code 216 as giving trans people "generous protections" (civil rights protections) that he "seriously questions" if we deserve. Why does he want to withdraw basic protections? Because (as he put it), when Chloe Cole spoke at the University of Iowa last October, people protested her. If you search for this incident online, you can indeed see videos of people chanting "trans lives matter!" Also, in advance of the event, some chalk-drawn sidewalk advertisements for Cole's talk were washed away, and a poster was ripped down.

So, because some individuals protested a talk (a thing they're allowed to do, a freedom everyone has), no transgender person deserves civil rights protections (as if basic rights are privileges anyone has to deserve)?

If you watch the video above (posted October 16, 2023), you can hear Jasmyn Jordan, chairwoman of Younger Americans for Freedom, say: "I believe that they think that right-leaning organizations are impeding on their rights and wanting to hurt them, which is very much not true. We just simply want to provide a different voice, a different perspective that they may not be used to." (0:36–50)

First of all: Why would someone think that a trans person isn't "may not be used to" a non-transgender voice? Have these people never heard that trans people indeed have empathy for cis people because trans people don't live in a trans bubble?

Secondly: Right-wing politics very much intend to hurt trans people. Removing us from civil rights protections qualifies as intention to hurt us. Changing the law to reframe what rights people do and don't have, without consulting the people who are affected, is, very literally, "impeding on their rights," and if intent to hurt us is in question, please see above mention of scaremongering.

Anyhow, today, lots of people turned up to testify and protest against the legislation, and it was voted down.

'It's dead! It's dead!' Iowans cheer demise of bill to end gender identity as a civil right, Stephen Gruber-Miller, Des Moines Register, January 31, 2024