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Hey, Lookie What We Little Midwest Farmers Can Do . . .
"May Other States Join Iowa as Beacon of Equality"


In summer 1991, a young, visually impaired gay man named Joel Larson was gunned down in a park near his home. Originally from Des Moines, he had lived in Minneapolis for only a few months.

A group of friends, family and budding activists held a memorial for him blocks from Iowa's Capitol. As a staff member of Minnesota's (then) only gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender social-service and advocacy agency, I was asked to speak. I hadn't been to Iowa since I was a child, but it was important to honor the man's memory and his all-too-short life.
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The pain in his friends' eyes was unspeakable. Activists were angry; family members simply wept. Shaking hands with Joel's father, I found myself at a loss for words. His son was killed because of his sexual orientation by an aspiring serial killer. "What do we do to stop it?" he pleaded with me. "We pass laws preventing discrimination," I grimly replied.

At the time, downtown Des Moines and the area around the Capitol were pretty rough. Smug and superior, I looked around and couldn't see how Iowans would ever pass protection based on sexual orientation and gender identity any more than they would revitalize their largest city. I happily admit I was wrong on both counts. And Iowa went one step further: In a stunningly sensible way that we Midwesterners have, the state's Supreme Court unanimously found that civil marriage cannot be denied to couples of the same gender. It is unconstitutional.

My Iowa roots run pretty deep. My mother was born in Dubuque and cousins still live there. I drove back from Joel's memorial that night through an awesome thunderstorm, Shakespearean in its power, the lightning illuminating the beauty of the northern Iowa landscape. It was as if nature was unleashing its fury over this man's senseless death.

Since then, Des Moines has become one of my favorite weekend getaways. I rave about the beauty of the state capital and extol its museums, restaurants, art galleries and historical sites as well as the sheer beauty of Iowa's environment. And I never cross the border without thinking about Joel Larson.

Like me, many remain cautiously optimistic that Iowa will not stand alone in the Midwest as a beacon of equality for long, but the record is mixed in the region and elsewhere. In 2006, Wisconsin and South Dakota passed constitutional bans on marriage equality. South Dakota's ban passed by only 52 percent after a remarkable grass-roots campaign fighting the ballot initiative with the simple slogan, "Good neighbors don't discriminate." This year, an effort to ban discrimination in North Dakota went down in flames. However, both Maine and New Hampshire passed marriage-equality legislation recently. Marriage equality in my home state of Minnesota may be litigious rather than legislative.

At the federal level, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens enjoy no civil-rights protections, receive no federal recognition of their marriages and cannot serve openly in the military. We are second-class citizens.

Since Joel's memorial, I've spoken on human rights at Central College in Pella and the University of Iowa. I attended the 2008 presidential caucuses. I've made close friends and even had a beau in Cedar Falls, all as an openly gay man. Not once did I suffer a slur or even a side-long glance. I am proud of Iowa for that.

When gay friends around the country had asked me what I thought would happen with the Iowa Supreme Court case, I always said, "They'll do the right thing." And they did. I also expect that after a short while the furor will die down - that's how we roll in the heartland. There is soil to till and crops to plant.

And soon the wedding invitations will appear in the mail. I can't say I'll be able to attend every nuptial, but I can promise you this. At every single one, you'll find a kindred and sweet spirit of a man who was once called Joel. May he now, finally, find rest and peace.