How should we celebrate National Coming Out Day in 2023 in the red state of Iowa?
This was a key question at the most recent meeting of Mount Mercy University’s Faculty and Staff GSA (Gender and Sexuality Alliance). Let’s start with logistics: we’re marking National Coming Out Day after fall break because the actual day, October 11, is on the first day of the break.
Mount Mercy will hold its National Coming Out Day on Tuesday, October 17, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the University Center.
Alliance Club at Mount Mercy’s National Coming Out Day 2022
There will be the usual festive trappings. The student LGBTQ+ Alliance will give out free flags, stickers, pins, and bracelets. (Proud faculty advisor right here!) There will also be a photo booth, face painting, music, and rainbows galore. And, as always, under the tutelage of GSA member Professor Heather Morgan-Sowada, there will be several educational tables hosted by our wonderful graduate students in Mount Mercy’s Marriage and Family Therapy program.
This year, one of these tables will include information about the many anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been recently passed in Iowa.
That table will obviously be far from festive.
Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws in Iowa
In case you need a legislative refresher, One Iowa offers a good summary of anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation in Education, and the Human Rights Campaign provides a helpful discussion of SF538, which outlaws gender affirming care for minors.
These laws demonstrate Iowa’s decline, a sad slide toward anti-intellectualism and bigotry. In April 2009, we were the third state in the nation to legalize marriage equality; this March we were the eighth to ban gender-affirming care for minors. Take a moment. Let that sink in.
Then try to come to terms with the fact that in Iowa, K-12 teachers must now out LGBTQ+ students to their parents. For students with homophobic or transphobic families, school is no longer a potentially safe haven.
Iowa once had some of the best schools in the nation; now we are nearly as bad as Florida or Texas. K-6 teachers can’t say gay or trans. And K-12 libraries must winnow out books that depict sex and, let’s be honest, people of color.
Anti-DEI Laws in Iowa
Iowa’s new anti-LGBTQ+ laws work in tandem with laws that aim to prop up patriarchy and white supremacy. In June 2021, Iowa’s governor signed a law that prohibits teaching “divisive concepts” (such as critical race theory) in public schools–kindergarten through higher ed. Such concepts are also outlawed in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion trainings that are mandatory.
Since then, the Iowa Board of Regents has gutted DEI Programs at Iowa’s state universities. For a firsthand account from a former DEI professional at the University of Iowa, read Chuy Renteria‘s blog. When Renteria recently visited Mount Mercy, it was a treat to learn from him and to discuss his memoir, We Heard It When Were Young, but it was sobering to hear about his DEI experiences at Iowa.
Chuy Renteria at Mount Mercy Times photo by Jenna Welty
Those experiences led me to this realization: In Iowa, teachers at many private schools have more academic freedom and more support for promoting diversity than teachers at public schools and state universities. Or, as I said to Chuy, my colleagues and I at Mount Mercy are far freer to express ourselves than are our progressive counterparts at the University of Iowa. Chuy observed that this was good for Mount Mercy. And it is. I’m proud of the Mercy Sisters and their tradition of championing the vulnerable. I’m proud of our Department of DEI, and proud of the work that the GSA has done to promote LGBTQ+ visibility and inclusion. But I’m sad for the University of Iowa, the place where I earned my PhD and learned the value of expanding the literary canon.
These mixed feelings bring me back to Mount Mercy’s GSA and the question of how to celebrate National Coming Out Day. Not just the easy questions–when? and with what sort of queer swag?–but the harder questions. Why? With what attitude and tone?
Mixed Feelings
National Coming Out Day has always been tonally complex. Keith Haring’s brightly colored art captures the joy for those of us who are out. But our joy is tinged with sorrowful awareness that many LGBTQ+ people still need to remain in the closet because their world is not safe.
Keith Haring’s image for the first National Coming Out Day in 1988
In Iowa, this sorrowful awareness is stronger than usual because our state’s new laws make it much harder for young LGBTQ+ people, especially trans people, to author their own coming out stories.
But I had no idea how much harder until I heard from some of my GSA friends. Before our meeting, I thought that Iowa’s ban on gender affirming care for minors related only to physical care. No puberty blockers, no hormones, no surgery. (As if doctors perform gender affirming surgery on minors!) What I didn’t know–and what many of my colleagues didn’t know–is that Iowa’s ban also applies to psychological care.
Under Iowa law, therapists are not allowed to provide gender affirming care to minors.
What the law actually says is that a “health care professional shall not knowingly engage in conduct that aids or abets the practices described in paragraph ‘a'”–the paragraph that outlaws blockers, hormones, and surgery for minors.
‘Aids and abets’!?! Talk about criminalizing a helping profession!
A GSA member explained that therapists can no longer help their clients find physicians to provide gender affirming care–even if it’s out of state. They certainly can’t write the letters of support that physicians often require before prescribing blockers or hormones. Therapists can’t even send their clients’ records to out-of-state physicians if they know that the clients plan to use the records to access gender affirming care.
To make matters worse, the Iowa Board of Behavioral Science, which oversees many therapists, would not let anyone discuss the new laws at its most recent meeting.
After a therapist in GSA explained all this, Iowa’s new laws became more real to me. More outrageous and horrifying.
I was not surprised when she asked if this year’s National Coming Out Day should be more somber.
But I was surprised by the speed and vehemence of my answer. “No,” I said, “We need to celebrate. The queer students need some joy. They’re looking forward to it.”
The group quickly agreed. But the exchange set me to thinking about the immense demands that get placed on queer joy.
Queer Joy
Imagine that National Coming Out Day is a potluck. This year, folks are extra hungry. The main dish is queer joy: a gloriously bubbling casserole of queer love, queer community, queer creativity, queer playfulness, queer defiance, queer authenticity, queer pride.
But in order to enjoy it, we must resist the urge to fill up on grief and fear and rage. We must tell ourselves that the people who can’t yet sample queer joy are nourished by the knowledge of the feast, by the knowledge that joy like ours exists and may some day be theirs. We must savor our own portion of joy, each distinct flavor. We must let it sustain us and fuel us. We must praise it. And we must keep making more.
So much depends on queer joy–on our ability to place our faith in it even as we acknowledge our sorrows.
It’s hard to hold both joy and sorrow in your heart.
But in this post, I’ll make room for both. I’ve already shared my sorrow–I’ve already called out our state’s bigoted backlash. Let us vote against it and resist it.
In the rest of this space, I’ll share some of my joy and hope. I’ll celebrate the progress made by Mount Mercy’s GSA, by Mount Mercy University as a whole.
When two colleagues and I launched the Faculty/Staff GSA in 2019, we had fairly humble goals. We wanted the student Alliance to feel the same freedom as other student clubs: freedom from heightened scrutiny. And we wanted a Pride flag in the University Center.
Done and done! Plus we’ve achieved our broader goal of increasing queer visibility and inclusion on campus.
Empowering Students
But the GSA didn’t create this progress alone. Mount Mercy’s students played a gigantic role.
The most visible Pride flag on campus is now indeed in the University Center. In the office of the Student Government Association.
Thanks to students and the Director of DEI, Dr. Charles Martin-Stanley (ally extraordinaire!) there is also a strong LGBTQ+ presence in Mount Mercy’s new JEDI room (Justice, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion). Alliance holds its bi-weekly meetings there.
The Alliance supports LGBTQ+ students, and it hosts fun events for the entire campus community. Last month, they held an outdoor Rainbow Fest that included tie-dying.
Alliance co-presidents at the Rainbow Fest
Along with Alliance, other student organizations have also worked to support LGBTQ+ people. The university newspaper, The Times, regularly covers LGBTQ+ issues and events, and it follows AP Style, using the singular gender-neutral pronoun ‘they.’ For example, notice the use of he/they pronouns in English major Jenny Welty‘s (’25) coverage of author Chuy Renteria‘s recent campus visit.
Last spring, the Nursing Club led a session on LGBTQ+ healthcare. The Political Science Club hosted a panel about transgender rights. One of the four participants included alum Aime Wichtendahl (’05), former editor of the Mount Mercy Times and the first transgender woman to be elected to Iowa’s government as a Chair on Hiawatha’s City Council. Another panelist was Mount Mercy English Professor Joe Hendryx (’05), a tireless ally and GSA member.
Faculty/Staff GSA
What has the Faculty/Staff GSA itself done? What have our some twenty members been up to since our 2021-2022 efforts?
Joe Hendryx himself has been up to a lot. In addition to serving on the Political Science Club’s panel, Joe has done two solo educational presentations, one on trans issues last spring, and one on intersex people this fall.
He ended his fall presentation with Donna Hicks’ Ten Elements of Dignity:
image created by Joe Hendryx
Because human dignity is the foundation of Catholic social teaching, GSA members may devote some spring meeting time to the concept of dignity, bringing our many disciplinary perspectives to bear on it.
This fall, however, we’re going to foster some queer joy and celebrate our Freedom to Read by discussing A Lady for a Duke by queer author Alexis Hall. Our Book Club’s organizer, English Professor Joy Ochs, describes the book as “a romance novel a la Bridgerton with a trans woman as the main character.”
Social Work Professor April Dirks, Mount Mercy’s long-time Safe Zone trainer, had a busy start to the school year. She led a Safe Zone training for all the Resident Assistants and Mustang leaders–over 30 students! And she did a training for the Athletic Department and Coaches–over 25 staff members!
image from thesafezoneproject.com
Going forward, April will include info about Safe Zone training in the diversity trainings that DEI Director Dr. Charles Martin-Stanley does with new employees. Thanks to a university administration that values all types of diversity, these employee trainings now have an LGBTQ+ component.
Diversity Film Fest
The Social Work program’s Fall Diversity Film Festival, organized by Social Work Professor Joni Howland, also included an LGBTQ+ component. As you can see from the flyer below, the fest included the animated short Out.
poster created by Trish Peyton
Cedar Rapids readers should note that GSA and Social Work will host the 2023 Diversity Film Festival on Friday, November 3, 1:00-3:30 in Basile 204 on the Mount Mercy campus. Once again, the fest will feature shorts, and this year’s LGBTQ+ selection will be the documentary Becoming Johanna, which shares the struggles and celebrations of a transgender teen.
Visiting Writers
Mount Mercy’s Visiting Writers Series sometimes brings LGBTQ+ poets and writers to campus, and as Director of that Series, I’m proud to say that last spring, we hosted poet Donika Kelly. You can read about her visit in my post titled Poetry, the Bittersweet, and Literary Serendipity.
Donika Kelly signs a copy of her poetry collection for a Mount Mercy student
About a month later–on Transgender Awareness Day–GSA hosted a virtual visit with another author, Father James Martin. A Jesuit Catholic priest known for his work in LGBTQ+ ministry, Fr. Martin has published several books, including Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity (2017).
During his time with the Mount Mercy community, Fr. Martin applied the ideas in Building as he addressed this important question: Why is it important for a Catholic university to support its LGBTQ+ members?
Listen for yourself!
My key takeaway: Jesus championed the vulnerable and marginalized, and so should we.
Fr. Martin discussed secular reason, Catholic Social Teaching, and the Gospels. All three, he said, call us to “stand in solidarity with those on the margins.”
LGBTQ+ people are often “treated like dirt” by religious institutions, he said, so a Catholic university might be the only place in the church where we feel welcome and safe, where we experience God’s love.
I’m extremely proud of Fr. Martin’s visit. At our very first GSA meeting back in 2019, when Psychology Professor Dennis Dew raised the idea of bringing him to Mount Mercy, our group agreed that the campus wasn’t yet ready and that his visit would be deemed too controversial. Well, we helped the campus get ready, and Fr. Martin’s visit was a success.
Lavender Ceremony
So, too, was our Second Annual Lavender Ceremony for our LGBTQ+ graduates. Once again spearheaded by Marriage and Family Therapy Professor Heather Morgan-Sowada (this time while she was on maternity leave!), the event included a welcome by Mount Mercy President Todd Olson and several musical numbers by American Idol star Alisa Von Presley.
flyer designed by Danielle Rudd
The highlight of the event for me was the student keynote speech by newly minted PhD Kait Hutson (’18 and ’23).
“Remember who you are,” she said to the LGBTQ+ members of the audience. She urged us to draw strength from our community’s rich history and to take pride in being a “people who love deeply and differently.”
What her speech helped me remember–or what it modeled for me–is the importance of living in the Midway, of acknowledging sorrow so that our joy shines more clearly and authentically.
Without a doubt, Kait’s speech also helped me write this post. Like National Coming Out Day, a commencement speech is, as Kait said, “supposed to be filled with positivity.” But, she continued, “as a queer therapist in the state of Iowa, it feels disingenuous and disrespectful to LGBTQ+ people to deliver only sunshine and rainbows.” After joking that she liked rainbows, she went on to discuss the damaging psychological impact of anti-LGBTQ+ legislative proposals, even when they don’t pass. (You can read her statement about the ones that did pass on her web site.)
“It takes courage,” Kait said, “to hope in the face of chronic adversity. What gives us courage is community, the shelter we find in each other, the space we create for each other.”
Kait celebrated our LGBTQ+ community so beautifully. Give yourself a gift this National Coming Out Day and listen to her speech.
“Queerness inspires us,” Kait said. “You are the transcendence of binaries and oversimplifications. You are possibility itself.”
Here’s to possibility. And community.
GSA members
photo by Josue Santiago Vera