This is the Tom Hartman Program.

A lot going on in the world today.

The Iowa House Education Committee is debating House Study Bill 649. It's a bill proposed by the actual

governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds. And this would end legal recognition for transgender people

anywhere the word male or female appears in the Iowa code

and would require special gender markers for transgender people on birth certificates.

When the bill was being debated, people showed up at the Iowa State House wearing pink triangles.

That was what Hitler made gay people wear.

Basically what they're doing is they're redefining the word equal. They're taking

us back, arguably, to Plessy versus Ferguson to you know to separate but equal to the idea

that you could have separate accommodations and what does equal me in fact when the

when the sponsor of the bill was asked, what does the word equal mean in this bill?

Her name is Heather Hora.

She said, quote, equal would mean, uh, uh, I would assume that equal would mean, I don't know exactly in this context.

End of quote. But the state legislature Aaron Reed writes over at the

Guardian seems poised to undermine the very concept of equality itself.

The bill goes on to proclaim that separate is not inherently equal.

Literally, it uses those words, separate is not inherently unequal.

Again, I thought we settled this with Brown v Board when we overturned

Plessy versus Ferguson. You know in 1954 we overturned 1898's plusy, the

separate but equal law. The bill mandates that transgender people be given unique

identifiers on their birth certificates outing them as transgender and that they

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