Regional Data
The Williams Institute is out with the annual estimate of LGBT population by state. In our region, Minnesota had the highest percent of adults identifying as LGBT at 4 percent. Wisconsin had 3.4 and Iowa had 3.2. North Dakota had 2.4 percent, and South Dakota was the nation’s lowest with 2 percent. The national average is 4 percent.

Iowa
Cedar Falls will get its first LGBTQ community clinic, KWWL reports:

UnityPoint Clinic will be offering health care services for the LGBTQ community in a clinic that is focused on providing a comfortable and welcoming environment for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer.
The clinic will operate out of the current UnityPoint Family Medicine Clinic on Prairie Parkway in Cedar Falls. The clinic is set to open Jan. 3rd. Patients can schedule appointments between 5-7 p.m. on the first and third Wednesday of each month.
Services provided by the clinic will include:
Emily Ball, a nurse practitioner at the clinic, says this will be the first of its kind in the Cedar Valley. The only other LGBTQ clinic in the state is in Iowa City at the University of Iowa.
“We just felt like we needed this local,” said Ball. “We didn’t want patients to feel like they had to travel a couple of hours, several times a month initially, and a couple times of year, we wanted everyone to find those services here.”
Ball says the goal is to make members members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community feel comfortable coming to the doctor.

Wisconsin

Madison Commons profiled the Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools, which is training teachers to better understand the needs of LGBTQ students:

Shawn Fredricks, a former health and physical education teacher at Beloit Memorial High School in Beloit, described always separating her students between boys and girls.
Though she considered herself a pretty accepting person, Fredricks said until she went to a training hosted by the organization Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools (GSAFE), a Madison based nonprofit advocating for LGBTQ+ youth, she was not aware about how much she did not understand about identity.
“I would say ‘boys over here and girl over there’ without giving it much of a second thought,” she said.
The small staff at GSAFE has been training Wisconsin educators for the past decade in creating a safe and supportive educational setting for students who do not fit into gender conforming labels.
In the past five years, the educational sessions shifted its focus to highlight the experiences of transgender students as well as LGBTQ+ students of color.

Brown County in northeast Wisconsin — and the home of Green Bay — is considering a gender identity nondiscrimination law , the Green Bay Press Gazette reports:

Brown County officials are scheduled this week to consider ways of protecting transgender persons from discrimination.
One plan would require that county employees and job applicants be treated equally and without regard to their gender identity or status as a transgender person.

Aaron Linssen (Photo: Bill Gellerman)
The county’s Executive Committee will take up the idea at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the Northern Building, 305 E. Walnut St., Green Bay.
Another measure, by Supervisor Aaron Linssen, would include gender identity as a protected class in the county’s housing code.
Linssen cited recent action by De Pere to prohibit landlords, employers and businesses from discriminating against transgender persons.
“My constituents in De Pere voted to make anti-discrimination their law,” Linssen said in an interview. “I think it’s the right time.”

An historic Madison property may become the city’s most prominent LGBTQ official landmark, the Wisconsin State Journal reports:

The era ended when Clarenbach sold the house in June 1987.
But three decades later, a coalition has created the Clarenbach House Project to seek city landmark designation for the property.
“If we fail to celebrate that time and forget to honor the hard work which went into expanding civil rights we are in danger of taking them for granted, and when we take something for granted we are exposed to the risk of losing it,” project chairwoman Leslie Schroeder said.