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Letter: Why waste time blocking kids at drag shows?
Op-Ed · February 27, 2025
I hadn’t followed House Study Bill 158, the “Felony Drag Bill,” closely whatsoever until I just happened to snag a quick snippet online the other day; like many of you, for better or worse, I don’t spend my free time casually perusing active legislative dockets. Perhaps I should begin.
Under the passage of this bill, were I to take my children to the Mrs. Doubtfire musical (let’s pretend it’s touring through Cedar Rapids), I could be charged with a class D felony, fined thousands of dollars and find myself entrenched in litigation over criminal charges.
Women performing or teaching or speaking publicly in front of children while wearing a shirt or pants from the men’s clothing rack would find themselves in a similar position.
A man, donning painted nails in public (painted himself for fun or by his children for their fun — doesn’t matter) would find himself in a similar position.
And, of course, as the common title of the bill implies, true “drag” performers, the same.
I’ve gotta say, I’m not pleased.
While our educational performance continues to decline (we used to be a national leader), our rates of child hunger increase, our wages stagnate, insurers hike rates/drop policies/wholly leave the state, housing costs continue to shut out new buyers, and our farmers suffer from declining profits — while all these and more are plaguing Iowans, our legislators are spending their limited time in session elsewhere, debating and pushing a bill that is not only horribly written, but meant to drastically penalize one of our nation’s smallest and least influential minorities (do we really need to inflict additional suffering?).
Let’s talk dollars.
My tax dollars, yours and our fellow Iowans’ are funding the salaries of legislators spending time on this sensationalized issue instead of making our lives better in truly impactful ways.
Should this bill pass, we’ll be diverting tax-funded policing attention away from violent crimes, road safety support, theft and fraud prevention, etc., and we’ll further clog the already encumbered legal machine with more tax-funded litigation.
We have better things to do and better ways to spend my money, your money: our money.
Let’s talk parental choice.
Except in extreme cases where a child’s mental or physical well-being is harmed or is in danger of being harmed, we leave parenting to parents.
Largely, who knows our children’s wants and needs better than we do?
The state should not dictate what food we feed our children, what clothes we buy them, what books we read together nor the entertainment we provide.
Heck, we already, legally allow minors to consume alcohol so long as they do it in their home under direct parental/guardian supervision!
We trust our parents to give their minor children alcohol, so if a parent/legal guardian wishes to take their child to a book-reading drag show, why should we restrict that right?
Why should we care? If Family #1 finds fun or benefit in hunting together, then they should be able to. Family #2 might not take their kids hunting. Maybe guns scare them or maybe they simply gravitate to spending their time on other things. Should we prevent Family #1 from hunting because Family #2 doesn’t? We have better things to do than restrict the basic freedoms of our parents.
Lets talk government efficiency.
The majority party in our legislature heralds itself as one of limited government intervention and of waste prevention. Yet we already have many existing safeguards in place that work well to protect our children from actually harmful events.
I’m sure most truly sexualized drag shows take place in liquor-licensed bars that are already required to screen identification and prevent entry to minors.
We have child safety laws that already define and penalize truly harmful parental choices.
We have pornographic limitations and indecent exposure laws that prohibit excessive or blatant visuals of genitalia in public. This car is already road-worthy; it doesn’t need this tune-up.
We have better things to do than add one more thing to the bureaucratic mess.
Lastly, let’s talk about who we are or, at least, who we used to be and could be again.
I grew up proud that we were a “purple” state, a state of reason and compromise. A state that always progressed but did so carefully and conservatively.
It was a point of this pride I think that both the nation’s conservatives and progressives looked at us, a largely agrarian state, smack-dab in the middle of more extremist populations and saw us as a bastion of humility and reason.
I wonder sometimes if I’m not the only one among us that wishes to see the return of this mindset and focus again on better things.
Bobby Kaufmann, I’ve got better things to do so, as my representative, I’m leaving it to you to take it from here.
Your constituents are funding this waste of time on a bill that likely increases our tax burden, restricts parental rights, seeks to patch an unbroken wall, diverts legislative attention away from genuinely helpful work and, I wonder, is perhaps meant to draw the national spotlight on some congress-folk more than truly benefit the people of Iowa.
On our behalf, will you speak reason to your colleagues, refocus them on the things we actually need and stand as a model of common sense?
We have better things to do.
David Hoffman
West Branch
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