What’s happening for LGBT folks in the state’s neighboring Minnesota? Each week, we will recap the news from Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota as it relates to the struggle for equality.

Iowa
The first-ever HIV is Not a Crime conference was announced this week, and it will be held at Grinnell College in June. “HIV criminalization imposes a profound injustice not only on people living with HIV but also on their family and friends,” Iowa resident Tami Haught, the conference coordinator and a person living with HIV said in a press release. “At the Grinnell gathering, we want to bring together advocates to engage in the next stage of the fight for equal justice for people living with HIV.”

More than two dozen national HIV/AIDS groups have signed on to the conference.

The Gazette took a look at marriage equality in Iowa five years after the Iowa Supreme Court ushered in marriage for same-sex couples. The paper asked lead equality opponent Rep. Dwayne Alons, R-Hull, about Republican support for his anti-gay marriage amendment.

“I think I finally had 13 or 14” sign on as sponsors, Alons said. The bill used to get 60 sponsors.

An Ankeny man is suing Casey’s General Stores after he was fired. He says he was terminated because he’s gay. From the Des Moines Register:

“In a meeting in her office, the manager allegedly told Shimer not to act “feminine” in the store, according to the lawsuit. Such behavior would make customers and co-workers uncomfortable, the manager allegedly said.”

Western Iowa Rep. Steve King lashed out against Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s veto of a bill establishing a right to discriminate against LGBT people. He said LGBT people shouldn’t be protected from discrimination because it cannot be verified. From the Huffington Post:

“The one thing that I reference when I say ‘self-professed’ is how do you know who to discriminate against. They have to tell you,” King said. “And are they then setting up a case? Is this about bringing a grievance, or is it actually about a service that they’d like to have?”
Sexual orientation does not warrant constitutional protection because it cannot be “independently verified” and can be “willfully changed,” King contended. The Iowa lawmaker linked his opposition to LGBT anti-discrimination laws with his long-running suspicions of hate crime legislation, which he described as “punishing people for what you think went on in their head at the time they perpetuated a crime.”

Comedy Central’s Steven Colbert launched a campaign to have LGBT people send pictures to King to prove their love.

Wisconsin
Wisconsin’s same-sex couples are eagerly awaiting the decision on a marriage equality lawsuit. The ACLU is trying to get the judge to block the state’s ban on gay marriage while a decision is pending. The judge hasn’t decided what to do yet.

Milwaukee Magazine explores the economic realities facing Wisconsin in light of marriage equality springing up around it:

“Now there’s three states – every state that touches Wisconsin, except for Michigan, which also has a constitutional amendment banning it, now has same-sex marriage. And so I think you sort of have to look at it from an economic perspective, and I think people are. There’s obviously other reasons to do this beside the economics, but it’s an interesting take on it,” says writer Abby Callard.

State lawmakers say they will not take up a bill that would allow people to discriminate against LGBT people based on religion, similar to a bill that caused controversy in Arizona. A Republican duo had offered the bill as a constitutional amendment which would have to be passed by two Legislatures.

North Dakota
The Tin Roof Theatre Company in Fargo is producing a LGBT-themed play this weekend, according to the Forum of Fargo and Moorhead.

In “The Twilight of the Golds,” a Tin Roof Theatre Company production opening tonight, a New York family is thrown into turmoil when Suzanne Gold-Stein (Crystal Cossette), and her husband, Rob Stein (Jeremy Ellsworth) discover through fictional genetic testing that their unborn child will be healthy, but he will be gay, like Suzanne’s brother, David (Ryan Soukup).

South Dakota
Conservatives lost their battle to pass a bill that said South Dakotans should be able to discriminate against LGBT people based on religion. Even Republicans couldn’t stomach it.

The Yankton Daily Press and Dakotan wonders when, not if, gay marriage will come to the state in a piece called, “A Doomed Ban?”