Slow, and then all at once
Gay marriage was made legal in Iowa on April 3, 2009. We’re a few weeks away from the fourteenth anniversary. I distinctly remember the day, as a young conservative—don’t hold this against me, I was thirteen and repeating the snippets of Rush Limbaughs rants I overheard. I mourned the decision, and I was angry. Almost as angry as the day, a few months prior, when the country elected Obama. I don’t remember much of my reasoning for being angry aside from the displeasure I saw in the adults around me. For what it’s worth, that reasoning eventually faded, and by the time Obergefell was decided in 2015, and I was eighteen, I mostly shrugged at the news and returned my focus to my punk band I was certain would one day be famous.
On April 2009, at the same time a thirteen year old me was repeating angry screeds against the news, a couple attending the Episcopal Church in downtown Des Moines excitedly rushed a judge to the basement of the church to finally officiate their long, loving relationship. I now attend this church. Things have shifted drastically for me over the past decade and a half.
It’s interesting thinking back on that feeling of decline I sensed in my young, reactionary fervor. There was much anxiety that we—as a society, as a state, as a nation, as a world—had landed upon a slippery slope, speeding toward a Gomorrah of strawmen bestiality and pedophilia. It’s strange to see this narrative still alive after so many decades of these things never really coming to pass, but it’s also more strange to think that this same sense of doom, this same sense of slipping into evil and oppression, has remained within me, but the evil destination has changed.
Over the past few days, Kim Reynolds has officially signed a bill banning gender-affirming care in the state of Iowa among minors. We saw this coming. The paranoia about LGBTQ people has reached a fever pitch in the headlines and discourse. We’ve been watching the real slippery slope for the past year, a project that’s been in the works for decades. Within the overturn of Roe, we were met with conservative voices assuring the panicking left that Obergefell would not come next, that the social right would be satisfied.
In Iowa, alongside the legislative attack on trans children, there are also bills attempting to place a heterosexual definition of marriage in the constitution. Gay marriage, gay rights, alongside the increased accusations of grooming against trans activsts and drag shows, all represent an emboldened social right. Roe was the beginning. We’re on the real slippery slope now.
I’m thinking about the way beliefs in slippery slopes work. The right has used appeals to slippery slopes to justify regressive measures against queer people for decades. The irony being that, the more people they convince of this slippery slope—that gay leads to trans leads to polygamy leads to pedophilia, etc—the more they actualize a real slippery slope of legislative attacks upon queer people growing bolder and bolder.
It is pointless to argue and demonstrate evidence that this “grooming” narrative isn’t true. It’s pointless to argue that a single teacher making an embarrassing TikTok, shared by Libs of TikTok and played on TV for Tucker Carlson’s audiences, is not representative of LGBTQ people as a whole. There’s no point in making these arguments toward Matt Walsh or Chris Rufo or any of these bad faith actors. They don’t actually care.
It’s strange to watch my state, that was boldly one of the first states to permit gay marriage, become one of many where trans children are being attacked. And please, of course, do not let these legislators convince you that they have any concern for children. As we watch trans children prepare to move to states that will not harm them, we cannot fall for this illusion of concern. We cannot fall for Kim Reynolds feigning remorse about the bill she signed into law.
These are, of course, some disjointed thoughts here. It’s strange to watch how fast this movement, that had chiseled away so slowly at the public consciousness for decade, takes over. I pray that trans children are safe. I pray that those who aren’t can escape unscathed. I pray that the shrill and libelous attacks upon those who simply wish to live their lives do not represent the majority of Americans. I pray that the right fails.