LGBTQ Youth Found Support At Iowa Schools. Now It’s Gone

This year’s legislative session has been awash in fearmongering and misinformation about the LGBTQ+ community, and particularly the realities of LGBTQ+ students’ lives.

So, instead of allowing adults to define their lives, Starting Line spoke to Iowa youth who are transgender, nonbinary and otherwise on the LGBTQ+ spectrum to get their thoughts.

These are their stories, in the second of a three-part series. Read Part 1 here and read Part 3 here. (Here are some helpful definitions of LGBTQ+ terms here.)

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Dani Kallas, a student at Linn-Mar High School, said they first came out as nonbinary at school, partly because they were still figuring out the specifics of their identity and weren’t sure what to say.

“I didn’t want to really tell anyone until I was sure,” they said. 

Dani started by having some friends use different pronouns to figure out what worked best.

“Even then, I didn’t know what to say to my parents,” they said. “It took a long time for me to figure out what I wanted to say. So it’s a combination of being confident in your identity and of having the right words to say.”

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School was welcoming place, until law forbade it

The Linn-Mar Community School District was a supportive place, Dani said, partly because it had a policy in place to allow students to use preferred names and pronouns at school, as well as facilities matching their identities, using Gender Support Plans.

For students in the seventh grade and up, the school placed the decision to tell their parents in the students’ hands, protecting a lot of students.

But Linn-Mar came under fire for those policies from US Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) and Gov. Kim Reynolds, and it’s one of the leading reasons for Reynolds’ education bill, which passed the Iowa Senate last week.

One provision of that law states that schools must immediately notify parents or guardians if “any employee of the school district reasonably believes” their student has expressed a gender identity different than the one on their birth certificate.

Reynolds signed a ban on gender-affirming care and a law requiring students to use the bathroom matching their sex assigned at birth last week.

After it passed, Linn-Mar Community School District announced they would no longer enforce the policy, “in order to review this policy in light of current and anticipated changes to the law,” the district said in a statement.

During her re-election campaign, Hinson ran an ad attacking the school district and its teachers, misrepresenting the policy and calling it “what happens when no one stands up to the radical left.” Linn-Mar is in her Congressional district and her sons go to school there.

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‘Feels like betrayal’ to students

The law could have terrible effects on students at Linn-Mar who have relied on those protections, Dani said.

“It almost feels like betrayal because they trusted the school with their identity,” Dani said. “They didn’t feel safe telling their parents, which is why they specified to the school, ‘Do not tell my parents.’”

Kayde, another Linn-Mar high schooler who identifies as genderfluid, came out to their parents because they didn’t like that their identity—an important part of who they are—was something their parents didn’t know. 

They hoped coming out would make them closer.

“I felt relieved when I came out because, honestly, I felt like they weren’t getting the whole picture,” Kayde said. “And I just needed them to know, like, it wasn’t the fact that I wanted them to know. It was the fact that I needed them to know.”

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And in some ways, it worked. Even if they struggled—and sometimes still struggle—with their dad, the two are closer now than they were before. Coming out also made it easier to go to their parents for support.

“It took time for my dad and some of my family members, but for the family members who understood and accepted me, it really helped me get through that rough time,” they said.

But being forced to come out? Kayde said they probably would’ve ended up hurting themselves.*

“As a high school person, I’m obviously becoming more of an individual, which means I’m trying to find myself,” they said. “If I’m worried about my parents trying to, quote-unquote, ‘fix me because I’m gay,’ and I have been outed to them, then how am I supposed to [do that]?”

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School ‘can help so much with mental health’

Clair Ammons, a trans woman and freshman at Iowa State University, is out to her parents, but coming out made the relationship tense. She said if people know they aren’t going to be supported—or safe—at home, of course they may only be out at school.

“It’s easy to understand why school is an easy place to come out first, because you’re among friends and that makes it easier,” she said. “If school can be one place that can provide a positive and supportive and affirming environment, to have at least somewhere that you go that provides that for you, for a lot of people, [that] can help so much with mental health.”

Clair said it’s a ridiculous idea for students to need signed permission slips to be called what they want to be called, especially if those students are older.

“Part of school is that you’re learning independence,” Clair said. “And it is, for most people, the only place—or one of the very few places—that they are ever apart from their parents. And so tying them to their parents even there is somewhat hindering.”

Legislators such as Rep. Skyler Wheeler (R-Hull) have pushed back on the idea that any Iowa parents would respond to their children coming out with abuse. He said it was insulting to make that claim.

Dani and Clair said it’s true not all parents are abusive, but lawmakers can’t pretend it won’t happen. Even one student being harmed because of an unaccepting parent is too many, they said.

Clair said a forced-outing policy has no respect for who students are.

“Everything about this is prioritizing parents’ ideas of their child at the cost of who the child actually is,” she said.

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All four have more to say about how Iowa’s new laws are affecting their lives. Read Part 1 here and read Part 3 here.

*If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, call, text or chat online with a trained counselor at the LGBTQ-friendly The Trevor Project by clicking here.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of the story misstated which anti-LGBTQ laws have been signed.

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Nikoel Hytrek
3/28/23

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