Father Of Trans Child Privately Asked Reynolds To Veto Anti-Trans Bills. She Didn’t

Like many Iowans with a transgender child, Matt McIver of Des Moines has paid close attention to this year’s Iowa Legislative session, in which more than 30 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced including several that specifically targeted trans kids.

Two of those bills—one makes it illegal to provide gender-affirming care to trans children and a school “bathroom bill” that restricts where trans kids can pee and change their clothes at school—became law when Gov. Kim Reynolds signed off on them on March 22.

The day before she signed the bills in a private ceremony, Reynolds said it was “uncomfortable” for her and that it was “not easy.” She also said she met with trans kids and their families. McIver was one of those people she met and, so far, is the only one who has publicly talked about the meeting.

McIver became aware of the opportunity to discuss the legislation directly with Reynolds via a screenshot his wife sent him from a Cedar Rapids-based LGBTQ advocacy and support group.  A group member shared the email address of a Reynolds’ staffer who sought out families of trans kids for the governor to speak to.

McIver decided to try. He sent a message on Friday, March 10, right before a family spring break trip to the St. Louis, Missouri, area.

“We’re down in Missouri and I get an email—like we got to the Airbnb, we unload and I look at my email and I’ve got an email from the governor’s staff offering me a meeting at 4:30 on Tuesday (March 14),” McIver said.

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McIver talked it over with his wife and he decided to accept the meeting request.

“Governors are busy people and when they offer you a time slot you don’t have much room to negotiate,” McIver said.

McIver spent Sunday with his family and by 1 a.m. Monday he was on a Greyhound bus back to Des Moines so that he could prepare for his meeting with Reynolds. 

“The whole thing with COVID was about parents’ rights. The whole thing with this book banning stuff they’re doing is parents’ rights and this is a bill that strips parents of their rights to the medical standard of care for their children,” McIver said.

“This is a bill of government overreach that inserts legislators in between patients and doctors and in between parents and children. And, in my opinion, they have no business doing that.” 

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According to McIver, the meeting started out with pleasantries. Reynolds told McIver about her daughters and grandkids. McIver told her about his kids including his almost 12-year-old trans son who, until recently due to increasing hostilities toward trans people, was a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights.

When it came to time to talk about the issue at hand, McIver said he honed in by noting the bill that bans gender-affirming care for trans children strips those parents of their rights. He said Reynolds countered by citing a Swedish study that other Iowa Republicans have used as a shield to ban trans youth gender-affirming care, although they misrepresent the research.

“I took a cue from Dr. (Katie) Imborek and said, ‘Look, I’m not an expert on Swedish public health, but I can tell you that not one Iowa medical association agrees, and if there is a conversation to be had about that and if those recommendations should change, that conversation should be had by doctors, not legislators,” McIver said.

“There’s not one Iowa medical association or national medical association that thinks this bill is good for kids.”

So how did Reynolds respond?

“Well, she said a lot. She said that she heard me and that she was listening,” McIver said. 

McIver also said the rhetoric surrounding trans kids and other LGBTQ people coming from Republican elected officials in Iowa and across the country needs to change.

“We got a lot of stuff that doesn’t match kids’ experience, families’ experience, and paints these things in a light that’s negative and not true,” McIver said. “She said, ‘Well, I’m not going to make a decision based on rhetoric,’ but I don’t know how you justify that decision otherwise because you can’t justify based on medicine.”

McIver argues that Reynolds made the decision to sign and support the bills based on rhetoric because it wasn’t based on listening to families who have trans kids.

“I can tell you that 100% of the trans families that she could talk with were opposed to this bill,” he said.

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As the meeting wound down, McIver made a final request.

“I specifically asked her to veto the bill,” he said. “She said she was still in the decision-making process.”

Reynolds signed the bill into law eight days later. By Friday of that week, she was bragging to a Fox News anchor about how proud she was of what she was doing in Iowa. 

While it wasn’t the outcome he hoped for, McIver appreciated that Reynolds met with him. Before she signed a bill to ban trans girls from playing sports last year, Reynolds’ staff confirmed she had not met with a single trans girl or family member about the legislation.

“Honestly, the meeting was—by intent on my part—very civil,” McIver said. “We joked, we laughed—not about the issue—but about kids, [and] I’ve got a 100-year-old house that I’m trying to fix the damn stucco on. You can complain about owning old houses in Iowa and people get it.”

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Starting Line asked McIver did he think meeting with Reynolds would change her mind about signing those bills.

“There’s a part of me that kind of kidded myself that maybe I could sway the governor—I’m a pretty persuasive guy—but I knew going in that chances she was going to veto the bill were small,” McIver said. “Maybe I could increase them, but could I get it over the line?

“That would have been shocking to everybody, including me. But I at least wanted to make a connection with her. I at least wanted to try to get her to see our family is just like her family, just like every family of the folks who are trying to push this bill so that, hopefully, having done so, she wouldn’t do it.

“It was maybe a bit of a fool’s errand but you gotta try.”

by Ty Rushing
03/31/23

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