They're coming for trans people. Will you speak out?
History has warnings for us about the kinds of actions we are seeing today.
I have always been interested in what the past can teach us about the present. The analogies are never perfect because every time has its own sociopolitical stew. But human nature, what motivates us, what frightens us, what fools us? That stays pretty constant. I have been thinking a lot lately about the nature of attacks on small groups of people, what motivates them, how some people are frightened and fooled into attacking others who are just trying to live their lives. And the easiest places to see those patterns can be the most dramatic ones: the fall of the Roman republic, the excesses of the French Revolution, the rise of Communism in Russia and Nazism in Germany.
More specifically, I have been thinking about Pastor Martin Niemöller. You may not have heard of him. He was a pastor in the large and powerful German Lutheran church in the early 1930s, and was initially an antisemitic supporter of the Nazis. It was only when the Nazi regime came for control of the churches that he finally spoke out—and was sent to a concentration camp for his troubles.
You may not have heard of Pastor Niemöller, but you have probably heard of the poem he wrote in 1946:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
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
I remember first reading the poem in middle school. I had learned about the Holocaust from elementary school books like When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and Number the Stars, so I thought I had an idea of what to expect from a book of Holocaust poetry.
I did not. Like many others in that collection, Niemöller’s poem is succinct and devastating. It sticks in your head. You’ll find yourself thinking of it and wondering where a similar progression might stop when things change around you.
And right now, things are changing in Iowa. On Thursday, Iowa Republican legislators introduced HSB 242, a bill that legally erases transgender Iowans. If you know nothing else about this bill, know this: it states explicitly that, in Iowa, “Separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.”
This is segregationism in Iowa, the first state in the Union to outlaw segregation in schools. HSB 242 continues the dangerous trend that started with gutting Iowa’s public trade unions, taking away workers’ rights more broadly, and the forced-birth law. That trend? Making laws to take away civil rights instead of making laws to recognize them.
Where might this trend go? Pastor Niemöller has warned us about this slippery slope: they will come for one group at a time, claiming all the while that they are protecting the rest of us from the evils of first one group, and then another. But they will keep coming.
To be perfectly clear, I do not think that Iowa’s Republican legislators are Nazis. But I do think that history teaches us that they are headed down a very, very dangerous path. And I fear that the trend of taking away civil rights, one group at a time, will not be ending any time soon.
So I am speaking out, and I ask you to join me. Right now, that means opposing HSB 242. Iowa LGBTQ rights organization OneIowa Action is sharing updates on this quickly evolving situation. This bill is being fast-tracked, so please follow OneIowa Action (HSB 242 page, Facebook, Twitter, main website, Anti-LGBTQ bill tracker) to find out how and when you can act most effectively to oppose its passage.
I will speak out for you. I hope you’ll speak out for me.
Kelcey Patrick-Ferree lives in Iowa.