Iowa
Iowa’s medical board has voted to study the dangerous effects of conversion therapy, the Gazette reports:

Members of the Iowa Board of Medicine rejected a request Friday to ban so-called conversion therapy for minors by licensed medical practitioners. But, they agreed to designate a study panel to research the topic to determine whether to consider implementing a rule at a future date.
“This is a complex area,” said Kent Nebel, the board’s director of legal affairs, during a meeting in which the state regulatory panel heard the pros and cons of a controversial treatment method — barred in four states and the District of Columbia — that attempts to convert lesbians and gay men to heterosexuality. The board had 60 days to take action on the rule-making petition filed Feb. 23.
Nebel suggested and the board concurred on a 9-1 vote to deny the rule-making petition for logistical reasons, not on the merits of the issue, and set up a process whereby various stakeholders, experts and other interested parties could engage in an informed discussion that would form the basis for a future board decision.
“You’re kind of placing us in a difficult position,” said board member Charles Wadle, a West Des Moines physician and the only dissenter who noted the board allows other medical methods — such as acupuncture, dry-needle therapy and chiropractic — that have come under challenge “and I’m a little concerned about going down this road.”
However, a group led by Timothy Foley, executive director of a state Youth Advisory Council, said the state should shield minors from “sexual orientation change efforts” that have been debunked by most mainstream medical professionals as ineffective, dangerous and potentially damaging.

Alison Bechdel, creator of Dykes to Watch Out For, was in Iowa City last week for the Mission Creek Festival, the Press Citizen reports:

Hardly a single seat was available Tuesday night at the Englert Theatre as hundreds came to see renowned cartoonist Alison Bechdel kick off the Mission Creek Festival.
Bechdel made several appearances throughout Iowa City on Tuesday, including an autograph session at Iowa City’s downtown comic book shop Daydreams Comics, but her lecture at Englert drew more than 700 people to the downtown theater.
The creator of the “Dykes to Watch Out For” comic strip, which was a heralded as a landmark in the LGBT community for its early representation of lesbian couples in popular culture, Bechdel discussed her creative process and her battle against lesbian stigmas through her art in Iowa City.
“I think it’s getting harder and harder to remember and to convey to people how hostile the attitude was towards homosexuality even 30 years ago,” Bechdel said to the crowd at Englert. Her comic strip ran from 1983 to 2008.
“Of course it was much better than my father’s generation, but still, at the time I was doing these cartoons, the Supreme Court, and most people, thought gay people’s lives were a joke and deserving neither privacy or dignity. And forget about same-sex marriage.”
Though Bechdel was brought to Iowa City for the Mission Creek Festival, Englert’s development director Katie Roche and and Mission Creek associate programming director Joe Tiefenthaler credited a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that the festival received to help bring literary stars to the festival.

Angelica Ross will be speaking at Iowa State University this week, according to a news release from the university:

A leader in the movement for transgender and racial equality will speak at Iowa State University.
Angelica Ross will present “We are Worthy: Empowering Transgender Lives” at 8 p.m. Monday, April 11, in the Memorial Union Sun Room. She also will discuss “Trans Entrepreneurship and Creating Trans–Inclusive Workplaces” at 2:15 p.m. in 2019 Morrill Hall. Both presentations are free and open to the public.
Ross is a leading figure of success and strength in the movement for trans and racial equality. Named “First Foot Soldier of the Year” in 2015 by political commentator Melissa Harris Perry, Ross is the founder of TransTech Social Enterprises, a company that empowers trans and gender-nonconforming people through on-the-job training in leadership and workplace skills. She has toured nationally, speaking with business leaders, educators and President Barack Obama.

North Dakota
Forum columnist Jim Shaw challenged Republicans on “religious freedom” bills:

Don’t be fooled by these renewed calls for religious freedom. They are code for discrimination against people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender. This distorted version of religious freedom would allow the Kim Davises of the world to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, even though it is the law of the land. It would allow business and government workers to deny legal services to gays and lesbians. Moreover, this version of religious freedom would allow gays and lesbians to lose their jobs or apartments because of their sexual orientation. That shameful scenario still exists in North Dakota.
Over time, religion has been used to justify some horrible actions: mass murder, slavery, stoning, and second-class status for women. We have hopefully learned from those tragic mistakes. It’s one of the reasons we have to take ISIS so seriously. That terrorist group commits atrocities in the name of religion.

Wisconsin
Anti-LGBTQ activity at a university in Wisconsin is being watched by authorities, KWWL reports:

Someone is repeatedly taking down posters meant to bring awareness and acceptance of the LGBT community on the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.
According to a Facebook post on the UW-Platteville Police Department Facebook page, Chancellor Dennis Shields says, “it has come to my attention that in recent months, Safe Zone triangles and posters have been repeatedly taken down from the doors of faculty and staff across campus without permission.”
The statement continues, “the unauthorized removal of Safe Zone signage makes members of our community feel unsafe.”

A Kenosha transgender teen won a battle with school officials to run as Prom King, ABC News reports:

After an uphill battle involving protests and a petition, a Wisconsin school will allow transgender high school student Ash Whitaker to run for Prom King.
Whitaker, a Junior at Tremper High School in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was initially told by school administrators that he had to run for Prom Queen because he was assigned female at birth.
“I said my son is not a queen,” Melissa Whitaker, Ash’s mother told ABC News today. Whitaker described her son as, “fun, funky, and probably more wise than I wish for him to be.”
The precocious 16-year-old started a MoveOn.org petition gathering nearly 6,000 signatures of support, which he sent to his school.
In the petition Ash writes, “I am trying to run for Prom King at my school, but am unable to due to my school’s resistance and insistent discrimination against my transgender identity (FtM). In addition to this, I am unable to use the male restroom or receive respectful identification from said administration.”

A Wisconsin Supreme Court justice won election despite her anti-LGBTQ writings of the past, Wisconsin Public Radio reports:

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley won a 10-year term on the state’s highest court after defeating appeals court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg in Tuesday’s spring election.
The Associated Press called the race shortly after 11 p.m., with Bradley leading by about 5 percent. She won with more than 52 percent of the vote.
In her victory speech, Bradley had some words for her opponent’s supporters.
“Please know that I am your justice, too. Everything I said on the campaign trail, I mean sincerely. I will always follow the law, regardless of how I feel about it,” she said.
Bradley’s win maintains conservatives’ 5-2 majority on the court.
Her victory came as she pushed past negative headlines created over her inflammatory college writings bashing gays, AIDS suffers and feminists. Republican Gov. Scott Walker appointed Bradley to the high court in December, making her the incumbent going into the election. After the writings surfaced several weeks ago, Bradley apologized on the campaign trail and pledged that her views had changed.

The Eau Claire school district is considering gender-inclsuive school policies and took the first step last week, WEAU reports:

Policies to protect transgender students are in the works for the Eau Claire Area School District.
In a 6-1 vote the school board agreed to amend its equal education policy to designate transgender students as a protected class.
The amendment means the district will look at its policies when it comes to transgender students.
Board member Joe Luginbill says as the eighth largest school district in Wisconsin it is important for Eau Claire to have a system in place to ensure equality.
Luginbill said, “In adding our transgender students as a protected class, and to free them from discrimination, that opens up the door to really be able to best serve those students.”
At Memorial High School members of the Gender Sexuality Awareness club are celebrating following the board’s approval.
“It’s so exciting, I can’t entirely describe how great it is for me to know that this is going to, not only help students here now, but future students down the line,” said senior Chyanne Servais. “This is progress even if there a few things that need to be worked out.”
The amendment will educate students and staff about transgender issues which sophomore Ajast Germaine says is needed.
“This is what’s going to bring light the problem that we’re having that not everyone is aware of,” said Germaine.

South Dakota
South Dakota’s attorney general wants the state to adopt an anti-transgender law, the Argus Leader reports:

Attorney General Marty Jackley in an interview with Argus Leader Media Thursday said he supported legislation that would have made South Dakota the first state to bar transgender students from using bathrooms that don’t match their biological sex and would have signed the bill if he was in Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s place.
“I have a 12-year-old son and a nine-year-old little girl and I don’t want my daughter to come home and talk about being in the shower room with someone with male parts,” Jackley said. “I think we’re to the point where we need to have a fair, non-discriminatory policy to address this.”
Daugaard vetoed the measure last month, saying schools can make decisions at the local level on how they can handle transgender students. He also said the measure would have also created legal liability for the state’s schools by forcing them to adopt policies that counter recent interpretations of federal discrimination law.
Under the measure, transgender students who didn’t want to use bathrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms based on their biological sex would’ve been required to submit a request to their school for a “reasonable accommodation.”

The Argus Leader took a look at what would have happened had the state’s governor not vetoed anti-transgender legislation:

South Dakota is getting a glimpse of what could have been.
The state legislature draw national headlines in February when a “transgender bathroom bill” sponsored by Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, passed both houses, putting South Dakota on the verge of becoming the first state to adopt such legislation.
Gov. Dennis Daugaard opted to veto the measure, citing concerns about legal repercussions for local school districts forced to enforce a law that runs counter to federal Title IX guidelines. He added that the measure “does not address any pressing issue concerning the school districts of South Dakota.”
National conservative groups that bolstered the bill and even offered legal support turned their attention elsewhere. They found a receptive legislature in North Carolina, which passed a law that, among other things, requires transgender people to use restrooms matching the gender on their birth certificates.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed the measure, which creates a mandatory statewide anti-discrimination policy that leaves out specific protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity, undoing local LGBT protections in favor of “religious freedom” doctrine.
The backlash was swift, with major corporations such as Apple and Google condemning the legislation and the NCAA threatening to withhold future events from North Carolina if the law isn’t repealed. The Obama administration has considered making the state ineligible for billions of dollars in federal aid for schools, highways and housing, and governors such as Minnesota’s Mark Dayton have issued travel bans.
Similar anti-LGBT or “religious liberty” bills were vetoed by governors in Georgia and Virginia, angering conservative supporters and drawing praise from those who saw the measures as attempts to discriminate against same-sex marriage.