At FDSH, junior Sofia Bristow led the protest through the halls and out to the student parking lot. Bristow uses the pronouns they/them.

“I was beyond impressed with myself and my peers for their effort and dedication to support the LGBTQ community,” they said.

The walkouts were coordinated by Iowa WTF, a grassroots organization led by Iowa youth across the state who are “fed up with the discriminatory legislation that will hurt LGBTQ+ and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) students in the Iowa Legislature.”

Students from East High School in Des Moines took their walkout even further and marched to the state Capitol building, Bristow said.

-Photo by Ella Champagne Fort Dodge mom Sarah SmallCarter greets Fort Dodge Senior High students who walked out of school on Wednesday to protest a series of anti-LGBTQ bills currently in the Iowa legislature. SmallCarter's 9-year-old daughter is transgender and an elementary school student in the district.

“I believe that this walkout alone has already caught the attention of legislators, especially considering the headlines this event has made,” they said. “With that being said, our efforts are not yet sufficient. We cannot stop now — we must equip the community with knowledge and resources in order to advocate for queer people to the absolute fullest extent.”

After walking out of the school, the group held a short rally in the school parking lot, where Bristow explained why they were protesting these bills in the Iowa legislature.

“If any of these important bills are to be passed, it will cause unequivocal damage to the quality of life of queer people,” Bristow said. “The ongoing notion that we are perverse groomers and deviant people who have an agenda to harm and indoctrinate children must come to an end. Our rights to live authentically and have access to support, health care and education should not be up for debate.”

A few adults from the Fort Dodge community came out to the short rally Wednesday morning to show their support. Sarah SmallCarter, who has a transgender daughter in elementary school in Fort Dodge, spoke to the students.

SmallCarter has been testifying in House and Senate subcommittees in opposition to these bills and is intimately familiar with the impact they will have on LGBTQ students. She told the students that the “hard, hard reality” is that some of these bills are going to pass and become law, but that doesn’t mean they should give up hope.

-Photo by Ella Champagne Fort Dodge Senior High junior Sofia Bristow leads protesting students back into the building while chanting "We say gay" in protest of anti-LGBTQ bills in the Iowa legislature. One of the bills they were protesting would ban any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K-6. Opponents have dubbed the bill "Don't say gay."

“So what we need to do though, is we build community,” SmallCarter said. “When we build community we become safer. We are safer together than we are by ourselves. We are safer together when we are loud than when we are quiet.”

“With the nationwide increase of hate crimes, the suicide rate of our trans loved ones and the attack on our culture, it is evidence that there is a problem,” Bristow said. “If we are going to stand here in silence, we are a part of the problem. Silence is acceptance. If we do not come out as a community, have outreach and support and speak out on these horrific bills, we will be doing a great disservice to the queer community and the people that we care about.”

The bills the students are protesting include:

House File 8/Senate File 83/Senate File 159: A series of bills that would prohibit any public school, accredited nonpublic school or charter school from using any curriculum in certain grades that relates to gender identity or sexual orientation. The bills vary on whether to include grades K-6 or K-8. SF 83 allows parents and guardians of students to sue a school if it violates the prohibition on gender identity.

House File 9: A bill that opponents say would “forcibly out” transgender students to possibly unsupportive, or even abusive, parents. HF9 prohibits schools from “facilitating any accommodation that is intended to affirm a student’s gender identity, if that gender identity is different than the sex listed on the student’s official birth certificate” without the written consent of the student’s parent or guardian. This means, unless a parent signs-off on it first, a teacher cannot use a student’s preferred pronouns (she/her, he/him, they/them, etc.) when referring to the student. The bill also prohibits schools from “withholding” information about a student’s gender identity from their parent or guardian, regardless of the student’s wishes or the family’s home situation.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert A handful of Fort Dodge Senior High students staged a walkout on Wednesday in protest of anti-LGBTQ bills in the Iowa legislature.

House File 190: A bill that removes gender identity as a protected class from the Iowa Civil Rights Act.

Senate Study Bill 1145: A bill from Gov. Kim Reynolds that would remove any sex education curriculum specifically about HIV/AIDS, the sexually transmitted disease HPV and the availability of a vaccine to prevent HPV. The bill mirrors many of the previously-mentioned proposed legislation. This bill would also require school districts to receive prior written consent of the parent or guardian of a student before allowing school employees to address a student by a nickname or by a pronoun that “does not correspond to the biological sex listed” on the student’s birth certificate.

On Tuesday, State Rep. Brad Sherman, R-Williamsburg, introduced House Joint Resolution 8, which proposes an amendment to the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage and define marriage as “the solemnized union between one human biological male and one human biological female.” He also introduced House File 508, which states that the Federal Respect for Marriage Act is null and void because it violates the First and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

HF508 also defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman and says, “no resident of Iowa shall be compelled, coerced or forced to recognize any same-sex unions or ceremonies as marriage.”

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert Fort Dodge Senior High junior Sofia Bristow uses a pink megaphone to corral the group of students participating in a walkout in protest of anti-LGBTQ bills on Wednesday morning.