Sinners in the hands of angry legislative gods

As often happens, Iowa's hottest days of the season coincided last week with the first days of classes at most public and private schools.

Added to the complications natural to the start of a new year were various vague rules and regulations imposed by the Iowa Legislature as its Republican majority targets LGBTQ+ youngsters, especially any who might identify as trans.

There are those books on forbidden topics that must be listed, then removed from shelves. And in at least a couple of districts, policing of the nicknames school personnel are allowed to use without parental permission. A frequently cited West Des Moines example: A student named Caroline who wished to be known as Carly.

So far, the Iowa Department of Education has declined to provide guidance --- leaving individual school districts scrambling to figure out how to protect themselves from the angry legislative gods into whose hands sinning public schools have fallen (apologies to Jonathan Edwards for the paraphrase).

Here's a link to an interesting piece at Iowa Starting Line, headlined This Is Why Iowa Schools Need Permission To Use Nicknames, that provides a little background information on the situation.