The Place I Call Home No Longer Calls Me One of Its Own
What happens when the place you love stops loving you back?
By PARKER WILLIAMSON
[Image of “Future Worth Fighting For,” a mixed-media work created by Parker Williamson in 2024.]
(Editor’s Note: This column first appeared on Rural Routes Substack. It is reprinted here with permission from the author.)
I grew up poor, non-white, and queer, so it was never a picture-perfect place to me, but I always considered myself lucky to be here. Iowa has been a better place for people like me than other surrounding states, historically speaking.
We used to lead the charge on civil rights. In 1839, seven years before Iowa was even a state, the Territorial Supreme Court proclaimed that “No man in this territory can be reduced to slavery.” In 1851, we became the third state to allow interracial marriage. In 1868, the Iowa Supreme Court held that "separate" was not "equal" and ordered Susan Clark, an African American, be admitted to the public schools. This effectively desegregated our schools 86 years before Brown v. the Board of Education. Same-sex marriage was legalized when I was eight, and sexual orientation and gender identity were added to the Iowa Civil Rights Act two years prior, in 2007.
Iowa is my home, and I used to be proud of that.
Oh how far we’ve fallen. I came out in 2011, 6th grade if you don’t want to do the math. There was support from my family, friends, teachers, and many in my community. Sure, there was bullying, dirty looks, and the rare call to the school to complain, but I was overall accepted and safe. I always knew that a lot of people in Iowa hated me for being me, but there was rarely direct confrontation about it. Maybe that was the “Iowa Nice” I always heard about.
In the 2022 election, Reynolds was going to win, there was no question about that. But she still punched down and released an ad stating that “Iowans know right from wrong, boys from girls.” This year, legislation has been proposed that would technically make it a felony for me in plain clothes to speak in front of children. And worst of all: Iowa is now the first state to ever remove civil rights protections from a group of people.
It is possible some of the discrimination we worry about won’t actually be allowed; in reality, there will be costly legal battles, humiliation, fear, and laser-focused hatred. But all of what we are scared of is what the other side wants to be the reality. Iowa is my home, but why would I want to call a place home when lawmakers WANT me to be discriminated against — in housing, employment, wages, credit practices, public accommodations, and education?
Iowa is my home and now I have to think carefully before heading to a new restaurant, see if I can find out if the owners are allies, or take the risk of being humiliated and denied service for wearing the wrong clothes.
Why do they even want to pass laws like this when we all know it might not actually materialize in the ways they intended? Hate. That’s it, that’s the only reason. Hate.
It has nothing to do with protecting women. Sex is already a protected category under the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Preserving the protected status of one vulnerable population does not and should not come at the expense of another. Rather than protecting anyone, it opens the door to invasive policing of peoples’ identities, and risks subjecting many to harassment and public humiliation based solely on appearances.
While we are unsure of the actual legal impacts that the Civil Rights Removal Act will bring, there are some things that we do know. According to research from The Trevor Project, anti-transgender laws cause significantly increased suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth, by as much as 72%. They also found that 90% of LGBTQ+ young people said their well-being is negatively impacted due to recent politics. Iowa is my home but the lawmakers here don’t care if their actions make kids like the kid I once was feel isolated and ostracized, even if it pushes them to take their own lives. So much for protecting children.
Iowa is my home, and I deserve to belong here just as much as anyone else.
Leading up to February 27th, the day of the final public hearing and ultimately the passage of the bill in both chambers, I was only angry. So. Incredibly. Angry. My mom would start the day by texting me to check in on how I was feeling, and later, during our almost-daily phone call, she would tell me how sorry she was that I have to deal with all of this. I was so angry about the legislation, about the people it would hurt, that I almost felt annoyed that she kept making sure I was okay.
Then, after chanting at the top of my lungs with over 2,500 other Iowans, I went home. Mother knows best, it seems. It hit me hard. I called her and couldn’t hold myself together, because I realized that not only am I angry, I am hurt.
“Mom, it hurts so bad,” I admitted. She listened, and when she replied all I could focus on was how much sadness and fear I could hear in her voice. How must she feel fearing that her son will face discrimination, legally, for living as his true self, something she always encouraged with love and support?
[Hundreds of Iowans packed the rotunda on February 27, 2025. More than 2,500 showed up to protest gender being removed from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Republican lawmakers later passed it through both chambers anyway, and Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it into law the next day. Image provided by Antonia Rivera.]
Iowa is my home, and I want it to be a place worth fighting for. A place that takes care of ALL of its people.
The Republican supermajorities could’ve put this amount of urgency and effort into passing any other legislation. They could be seeing to it that every child in this state gets a high-quality education instead of bleeding our public schools dry. They could be protecting our water, ensuring it’s clean enough to drink, safe enough for us to swim in. They could be confronting the rising cancer rates, investing in healthcare access, making it easier — not harder — for Iowans to get the care they need. They could actually protect women by strengthening reproductive freedoms instead of stripping them away. The possibilities are endless.
They could be doing ANYTHING else, but they insist on making life harder for people like me. They insist on making an already vulnerable community a target for discrimination and hatred.
Iowa is my home, but is the future here worth fighting for?
Home is a place where you are known, where you are accepted, where you can breathe without fear. Home is where you grow, where you stumble, where you are allowed to exist fully as yourself without apology. It’s not just four walls and a roof, not just a town on a map. Home is community. It’s the people who show up for you, who see you, who stand beside you. Home is where you should feel protected, not persecuted. Where you should be nurtured, not pushed out.
Iowa was my home, and now I just live here.
About The Guest Author
Parker Williamson is Progress Iowa’s press secretary. He grew up in rural southwest Iowa.
About The Iowa Mercury
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
I grew up on a Century farm in western Iowa in the 50’s and 60’s. I also experienced Iowa as pretty open. After living in villages all over the world, nearly 40 years ago my family settled in Canada, the place of our last work assignment. This year my oldest son had registered for RAGBRAI to carry on a family tradition. He just cancelled this week for moral reasons, as much to do with the current direction of the US as with Iowa’s current decisions, but they are very similar. His wife is half Chinese-Jamaican, and he did not want to go somewhere where she might be the recipient of hate.
As Dave Busiek aptly put it, the GOP has for years demonized the gay and lesbian population to tap into discrimination hate. Since they still use this hatred but want to appear "more reasonable", they've zeroed in on hatred of the transgendered.
Hang in there. I figure if POC have fought against racial hatred for eons, the least I can do as a white straight man is to not wilt but fight in front of this outrageous, evil hatred.