Wisconsin
*The Baraboo, Wis. school board will consider a policy to allow transgender students to participate in high school athletics, WKOW reports.

Doug Mering, chair of the Baraboo board’s policy committee, says the proposal he and several others drafted is based off WIAA guidelines released in 2013.

“It’s all about giving the tools to our administration and staff to be able to make the right decisions and to be able to handle it in a responsible manner,” Mering tells 27 News.

*Westboro Baptist Church is coming to Kenosha Wisconsin to protest Bradford High School, as well as several other schools and churches in southeastern Wisconsin that the protesters believe are to “pro-homosexual,” Kenosha News reports.

*Glenn Grothman, an anti-LGBT state Senator who won election to Congress in November, lashed out at non-traditional families in an interview with the Family Research Council, Right Wing Watch reports.

Wisconsin Republican state Sen. Glenn Grothman, who was recently elected to the U.S. House, appeared on “Washington Watch” yesterday to reiterate his pledge to weaken government efforts to help low-income families, which he has denounced as “a bribe not to work that hard or a bribe not to marry someone with a full-time job.”
The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, the host of the program, agreed with the Grothman, claiming that liberals see “big government entitlement programs” as “sacred” institutions, while the soon-to-be congressman warned that “the government is doing all they can to destroy the nuclear family.”

Iowa
Openly gay state Sen. Matt McCoy of Des Moines has written a book about the stuggle for marriage equality in Iowa, the Des Moines Register reports.

The publication, co-written with Jim Ferguson of Clive, who has been a school administrator in several states, is titled, “McCoy, You’re Going Straight to Hell.”
A publicist says the book reveals personal stories and opinions sent to him from those supporting same-gender marriage as well as those bitterly opposing it. McCoy is an Eagle Scout and a graduate of Dowling Catholic High School and Briar Cliff College who has served in the Iowa Legislature for 22 years. He and his son, Jack, live in Des Moines.

*The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics received top marks for LGBT inclusion in health care:

For a second year in a row, the Healthcare Equality Index (HEI) has named University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics an Equality Leader in its national survey based on nondiscrimination policies and care for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ) community… Among the more than 1,500 institutions evaluated in this year’s survey, less than a third received the Equality Leader designation. The four criteria for the designation are: patient nondiscrimination policies, visitation policies, employment nondiscrimination policies, and training in LGBTQ patient-centered care.