Identity of oneself is, ironically, something hard to identify. Many people have spent years just trying to figure out what their identity is, and those lucky enough to find those answers are able to live the life they want in a manner more aligned with their values because of it.
Recently, for a myriad of minute excuses, Kim Reynolds and the GOP in Iowa decided that gender identity should not fall under the code of civil rights, with the Iowa legislature voting to remove civil rights protections for transgender individuals.
Reverting civil rights precedent in order to control the gender expression of your citizens seems like a shift in societal and political thinking that could have a wide-ranging impact.
Some people, depending on religion, might think of gender identity as a sin and that this should have happened, while others simply don’t care because it doesn’t affect them. If these people stopped and thought about what decreasing civil protections and freedoms represents, I believe many would start to understand why this path isn’t the correct one.
Some people who agree with this action in Iowa politics believe that gender identity isn’t real and gender is binary. These people don’t know how to Google “is gender binary.” If, in the discussion of human rights and the freedom of people’s choices, all parties cannot accept clear scientific evidence, then we have lost all rationality.
It is clear that parties who believe gender is a straight line cannot accept clear factual evidence, even when it is provided in droves and literally at their fingertips. Thus, I refuse to waste more time and words giving bigotry the attention it survives on.
When it comes to those who voice religious objections, since we’ve got that whole “Land of The Free” reputation going on, if a person or group is being discriminated against based on a fact about who they are, the full weight of the law should be behind them.
This country and state were built on the belief in the separation of spiritual belief and justice of the law.
Now, for the people who tend to “stay out of politics” and don’t want the stress of dealing with the choices we make as a country, I’d like to say this: As long as you are living, you are inherently political. You consume resources of the world, use energy, have a personal ideology, have an identity and communicate online every day on the same platform used by politicians to sway your views.
Because civil rights are being tampered with in Iowa and across the country, your very core beliefs of identity and expression are now on the precedent chopping block.
There is now a legal basis to take away protections for discrimination against age, race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability and religion.
I could argue that protecting people from prejudice shouldn’t be political — that we should understand this lesson by now.
I could, but I don’t have to. The words of history are more convincing than I could ever be.
“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist…
…Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew…
…Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me”
“First They Came” by Pastor Martin Niemöller.
