A Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin is taking heat for homophobic articles and columns she wrote 24 years ago; The Iowa Senate passed a bill adding gender identity to the state’s hate crimes law; South Dakota’s LGBTQ community celebrates as four anti-LGBTQ bills were defeated in the 2016 legislative session.

Wisconsin
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley is facing intense controversy over overtly homophobic articles and letters she wrote in college, Wisconsin Public Radio reports:

The liberal group One Wisconsin Now on Monday revealed a college newspaper column and letters to the editor Bradley wrote when she was a student at Marquette University in 1992.
At a news conference Monday, One Wisconsin Now director Scot Ross read excerpts of Bradley’s editorials. One column labels homosexuals and victims of the AIDS epidemic as “degenerates who basically commit suicide through their behavior”.
In another, Bradley reacts to the election of Bill Clinton as president, describing him as “queer-loving” and saying his victory “proves that the majority of voters are either totally stupid or entirely evil.”

Ross said Bradley’s views make her unfit to sit on the state’s high court and called on her to resign.
“The hate and vitriol for others Justice Rebecca Bradley displayed in her writings was repugnant and unbecoming a university student then, and it is absolutely unacceptable for a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice,” Ross said.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a list of some of Bradley’s writing:

The column and letters to the editor include these statements:
■ “Perhaps AIDS Awareness should seek to educate us with their misdirected compassion for the degenerates who basically commit suicide through their behavior.”
■ “But the homosexuals and drug addicts who do essentially kill themselves and others through their own behavior deservedly receive none of my sympathy.”
■ “This brings me to my next point — why is a student government on a Catholic campus attempting to bring legitimacy to an abnormal sexual preference?”
■ “Heterosexual sex is very healthy in a loving martial relationship. Homosexual sex, however, kills.”
■ “I will certainly characterize whomever transferred their infected blood (to a transfusion recipient) a homosexual or drug-addicted degenerate and a murderer.”
■ “We’ve just had an election (in 1992) which proves the majority of voters are either totally stupid or entirely evil.”
■ Clinton “supports the Freedom of Choice Act, which will allow women to mutilate and dismember their helpless children through their ninth month of pregnancy. Anyone who could consciously vote for such a murderer is obviously immoral.”

Bradley apologized for her writing in a statement, the Capitol Times reports:

Bradley immediately apologized for the content of her writings.
“I was writing as a very young student, upset about the outcome of that presidential election and I am frankly embarrassed at the content and tone of what I wrote those many years ago,” Bradley said in a statement. “To those offended by comments I made as a young college student, I apologize, and assure you that those comments are not reflective of my worldview. These comments have nothing to do with who I am as a person or a jurist, and they have nothing to do with the issues facing the voters of this state.”

Republican Governor Scott Walker appointed Bradley to the court in October. According to the Associated Press, Walker defended Bradley:

Bradley, 44, apologized and said the calls for her to resign are absurd. And on Tuesday, Walker defended his appointment of her, saying Bradley has made clear that her views have changed since she wrote the anti-gay columns as a 20- and 21-year-old student.
“It was appropriate that she clearly stated that those are not her opinions now and that they haven’t been in her professional practice as an attorney nor in any of the judicial positions that she’s had,” Walker said. “I think a good chunk of society has got very different views than they did in college, particularly for someone who (attended) almost a quarter of a century ago.”
Bradley said Monday that she was embarrassed by the anti-gay writings, in which she referred to homosexuals as “queers” and “degenerates.” Her campaign manager, Luke Martz, said Tuesday that Bradley has attended fundraisers for gay advocacy groups in recent years and donated money to a camp for children suffering from HIV and AIDS.

The Associate Press notes that Walker and Bradley have close ties:

Walker’s spokeswoman Laurel Patrick said Wednesday that the governor didn’t know about Bradley’s writings before he appointed her to three judicial openings. Bradley said she has never spoken with Walker about them.
Walker and Bradley only overlapped at the private Jesuit school in Milwaukee for a year, a time when they coincidentally both had letters to the editor published in the student newspaper, an Associated Press review of records showed. Bradley’s most controversial writings, including her column calling gay people “queers” and “degenerates,” were published two years after Walker left college.
Bradley, in a forum Wednesday at the Milwaukee Bar Association, apologized for the third time in as many days for her college opinions, saying her views are different today thanks to a “mosaic of life experiences.”
There are other ties from Marquette connecting Bradley and Walker.
The future state Supreme Court justice served as a senator on Marquette’s student government alongside Jim Villa, one of Walker’s longest and most trusted advisers. Villa and Bradley were at a heated student senate meeting in 1991 where Bradley slammed down her nameplate and threatened to resign during a discussion of whether the university should add a multicultural course requirement, according to a student newspaper article.
Villa went on to serve as Walker’s chief of staff for five years when Walker was Milwaukee County executive and as an informal adviser to Walker’s presidential run last year.

Wisconsin State Journal columnist Chris Rickert argues that Bradley’s writings are part of a larger trend in Republican culture:

For me, the scariest thing about Bradley’s rantings is not that they — and other of her writings from the time — reflect opinions that resonated with her (and others) 24 years ago. It’s that they reflect the kind of bitter and angry response Republican voters seem to have toward diversity.

Vilifying Latinos and Muslims and making fun of women and the disabled hasn’t hurt the GOP’s presidential front-runner, after all. Quite the opposite. Donald Trump leads all other Republicans here in Wisconsin, too, according to the Marquette poll, with about 30 percent support.

Of course, Bradley isn’t running against someone less Trump-like. She has to face the candidate preferred by Democrats. And polls also show that Trump doesn’t do so well against them.

Bradley’s writings have quickly become part of the campaign for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Wisconsin State Journal reports:

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Rebecca Bradley and JoAnne Kloppenburg clashed this week over who would let their personal political beliefs or connections cloud their ability to fairly interpret the law.
The two met at a Milwaukee Bar Association forum Wednesday — their first meeting after revelations this week of Bradley’s controversial college-era writings, including a new one Wednesday in which she supported a scholar’s suggestion that women could be partially responsible for date rape.
For the third day in a row, Bradley apologized for making anti-gay comments in opinions written in 1992 and published in the Marquette University student newspaper. She said her worldview had changed in 24 years after listening “to people who have experienced terrible prejudices and unfairness in their lives.”
“You realize how wrong you might have been when you thought you knew everything at the age of 20,” Bradley said at the forum.
But Kloppenburg rejected Bradley’s claim that she had changed her views.
“Justice Bradley talks about change and talks about this being, ‘now is now, then was then,’ but her career does not show much evidence of changes,” Kloppenburg said, citing Bradley’s involvement in the conservative Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and the Republican National Lawyers Association.

The Isthmus takes a look at LGBTQ homelessness in Wisconsin and nationally:

Homelessness is growing in both Madison and around the country. Data indicates that it disproportionately affects youth who are LGBTQ+, an acronym for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, with a “plus” added for those who are questioning or don’t quite match any of those identities.
According to a June 2015 report by the Williams Institute, “Serving Our Youth 2015: The Needs and Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth Experiencing Homelessness,” roughly 20% of youth using homeless services identify as gay or lesbian, 7% as bisexual and 2% as questioning their sexuality. Yet, LGBTQ+ youth make up only 7% to 8% of the United States population.

Iowa

The Iowa Senate voted to add gender identity to the state’s hate crimes laws, the Des Moines Register reported:

A divided Iowa Senate voted Tuesday to add transgender individuals to the list of people protected under the state’s hate crimes laws, which carry enhanced punishment for convictions.
Senate File 2284 was approved on 27-21 vote with Sen. Charles Schneider, R-West Des Moines, joining all 26 Democrats in voting yes. All the no votes were cast by Republicans.
The bill now goes to the Republican-controlled Iowa House, where it probably won’t be debated and will likely be declared dead this session. Rep. Greg Heartsill, R-Columbia, a leading House social conservative, said he doubts the Senate measure has sufficient support to pass the House. In addition, Heartsill said he does not believe there is time for the House to consider the proposal before a key legislative deadline is reached this week.
Much of the Senate debate focused on an unsuccessful attempt by Sen. Jake Chapman, R-Adel, to add the unborn to the list of Iowans protected by the state’s hate crime laws. Sen. Tony Bisignano, D-Des Moines, rose twice on the Senate floor and tried to stop Chapman from giving detailed descriptions of how abortions are performed, saying it wasn’t relevant to the debate.

The bill took on increased urgency last week after a transgender youth was found shot to death in Burlington, the Little Village Magazine reported:

Following the death of a transgender teenager in Burlington last week, the Iowa Senate passed an amendment to the state’s hate crimes statute to protect transgender individuals, adding to its wording “gender identity” and “gender expression.”
According to the Burlington Hawkeye, Kedarie Johnson, 16, was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds in an alley on Wednesday, Mar. 2. In a statement last week, Burlington Police Department Major Kramer said, “We will not speculate on the manner and cause of death until all facts from the scene and the autopsy have been reviewed.”
Iowa Public Radio reports that bill proponent Matt McCoy said Johnson was having a difficult time in school and that Burlington Community High School was working to protect Johnson, whose death took place shortly after discussion of the bill was delayed a week prior. “No one believed her life would be ended one week later,” McCoy told the Senate.

The LGBT community praised passage of the bill, Iowa State Daily reported:

“We were really pleased to see that it passed,” said Donna Red Wing, executive director for One Iowa. “It’s just a common-sense thing. If we are protecting people on all of the other levels like race, gender and sexual orientation, then we should certainly be protecting based on gender identity and gender expression.”
One Iowa, the largest LGBT advocacy group in the state, was one of the organizations that helped gain support in order for the bill to be passed.
It helped ignite the community on the issue and rally support, Red Wing said.
“We had a petition going,” Red Wing said. “We had around 1,500 to 1,600 signatures. It was real people who cared about this, and so we submitted that.”
Some individuals from within the community find this bill to be a very positive thing, whether it passes or not.
“It’s positive development since there aren’t a whole lot of states that have those protections right now,” said Carolyn Hutchinson, graduate student in chemistry at Iowa State and the public relations and outreach coordinator for the Queer* Graduate Student Association. “I hope that this brings some positive visibility. Having this protective bill is definitely very positive for Iowa.

The Iowa State Daily called on Iowa’s Republican-controlled House to pass the bill and send it to the governor:

The issue of not having enough protection for those in the transgender community who are victims of hate crimes is a topic of discussion that has been brought up many times over the last few months. The reason is because there were not sufficient laws in place to legally protect transgender people who are victims of hate crimes.
The Daily’s editorial board has also weighed in on this conversation because excluding a group from legal protection is somewhat out of character for Iowa. Iowa has always been a more progressive state, and the lack of protection allotted to this group must not persist.
It seems that the Iowa Senate finally agreed because on Tuesday, a divided Senate voted to add transgender individuals to a list of groups that are protected under the state’s hate crime laws. This will also lead to harsher punishment for people who are convicted of enacting a hate crime.
The file was approved 27-21 when a Republican from West Des Moines sided with all of the Democrats in a favorable vote. Charles Schneider was the only Republican who felt this issue should be pushed through to the House for a vote.

The Storm Lake Pilot Tribune examined life for transgender Iowans in small towns:

Asked about the trangender community in Storm Lake, Angus Pollock offers a slight, wry smile.
“You,” he answers, “are looking at it.”
The Storm Lake man shared his experience in transitioning from a woman to a man in semi-rural Iowa, in an intimate conversation with Buena Vista University students, “Walk in My Shoes.”
He began by noting that he does not expect everyone’s approval for the choices he has made.
“You don’t have to understand it,” he told an overflowing crowd of students, who sprawled out on the floor when the seats were gone. “My existence has no impact on your life, other than hopefully opening your mind a little.”
Angus – formerly Christine – never fit the stereotypical female role. “Girls like pink, boys like guns. I really love guns – I was in the Marines. I hated Barbies. Drove my mother nuts,” he said.
All of his life, he has remembered an incident at age 5 that was his first realization that he was not like other girls. Fishing with dad, splashing around in the water, with her shirt off, a child of the outdoors. Until other people arrived on the scene, and her father panicked and ordered her to get a top on, though little boys continued to swim shirtless. She recalls arguing with her father, something she never did otherwise, rebelling at the notion that she needed to act like a girl. It would be many years before he realized why that memory was important.

The head of Iowa’s largest LGBTQ organization has been appointed to the Des Moines Civil and Human Rights Commission, according to a statement from the organization.

Republicans continue to conduct what critics have called a “witch hunt” against a LGBTQ youth conference, the Des Moines Register reports:

The Iowa House Government Oversight Committee is scheduled to release a report Wednesday accusing a conference aimed at empowering gay and lesbian youth of allowing sexually explicit content and profanity at one of its workshops last spring.
But there are legitimate questions as to whether such a probe is even within the panel’s authority — or if, as the House minority leader suggests, it reflects an anti-gay agenda.
The annual Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth was started 11 years ago by the Iowa Safe Schools initiative to prevent bullying and suicide and give Iowa middle- and high-school students support and information to help them get through school safe and healthy. Despite its name, it’s a private event funded by donations and foundations, and has no affiliation with the governor’s office, as a spokesman for Gov. Terry Branstad recently reiterated.

A church in Mason City was vandalized as the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus was set to perform, the Globe Gazette reports:

Because vandals are so hard to track down, we may never know who spray-painted a sign at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Mason City.
The sign promoted what had been, by all counts, a wonderful concert by the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus several days before.
But we’ll probably never know whether it was a random act of vandalism or, more likely, a hate crime protesting the appearance by the gay men’s chorus.
Whatever the case, we want to make a point: This vandalism is despicable. This is not Mason City. Not today. Not for the vast majority of its residents. The Rev. Chuck Kelsey, pastor at First Congregational, agrees.
“I thought we were past that,” Kelsey said.

South dakota
The Argus Leader wraps up the winners and losers for the 2016 legislative session. The LGBTQ community was a winner, the paper reports:
LGBT community:

South Dakota’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community was able to draw state and national scrutiny to a set of bills it considered discriminatory. All four were ultimately defeated, including the transgender bathroom bill that was vetoed by Daugaard. Another would have given special protections to people who express conservative views on marriage and gender. Lawmakers who introduced the bills said they are likely to bring similar measures next year. Expecting another battle in 2017, transgender leaders after the session formed Trans Action South Dakota, a coalition created to educate employers and others about transgender people and to help create inclusive public policy.