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Statement from Republican candidate John Thompson:
Throughout our lives, all of us wear a variety of hats. I am someone who has worn the hat of union carpenter, soldier, and community leader. But there is no more important hat I’ll ever wear than that of a father.
Each of us has a responsibility to do all we can to protect and defend the innocence of children. There are reasons we don’t allow children to make certain decisions until they become adults.
Whether we like it or not, all of us have a duty and an obligation to do all we can to protect those who can not protect themselves.
Today, our Democrat State Representative introduced two bills that would have a devastating impact on Iowa’s children.
First, State Rep. Wichtendahl introduced a bill to repeal the protections put into law for minors against radical, life-altering sex changes. The opposition will attempt to pretty it up and call it “gender-affirming care,” but as someone who prefers to tell it like it is, gender-affirming care is synonymous with sex change.
Children deserve protection, not experimentation. Like each of us, the state has an obligation and a duty to protect its citizens — especially its children.
I believe strongly that children in Iowa are just that — children. They are not guinea pigs for the radical Left to experiment on with sex change treatments and surgeries.
In addition, Rep. Wichtendahl filed a bill to repeal a portion of the Parental Rights in Education Bill. The opposition will again play word games with this issue, calling it a “book ban.” In reality, all this portion of the Parental Rights in Education Bill does is guarantee books in schools are age-appropriate for children.
The truly crazy thing about this issue is, the opposition will never do two things:
First, they will never actually show you what is in the books or actually read to you from the books. They don’t do this because they know if they do, any common-sense Iowan will agree the material has no place in Iowa’s schools.
How can I be so sure? Simple. When a news story was published featuring 11 pages of the book “Gender Queer,” within 24 hours Google flagged that story as containing adult sexual content and Facebook said it violated its community standards on sexual activity.
Do we really believe Facebook and Google are just offshoot organizations of the far-right in an attempt to censor and ban books?
Of course we don’t.
Second, they will never tell you how a book is determined to be age-inappropriate in Iowa. To be clear, here are the criteria for determining whether a book is age-appropriate:
“Any sexual contact between two or more persons by any of the following:
1. Penetration of the penis into the vagina or anus.
2. Contact between the mouth and genitalia or mouth and anus or by contact between the genitalia of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person.
3. Contact between the finger, hand, or other body part of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person, except in the course of examination or treatment by a person licensed pursuant to chapter 148, 148C, 151 or 152.
4. Ejaculation onto the person of another.
5. By use of artificial sexual organs or substitutes therefore in contact with the genitalia or anus.
6. The touching of a person’s own genitals or anus with a finger, hand, or artificial sexual organ or other similar device at the direction of another person.”
As disturbing as it is, consider how disturbing it is that books visually depicting such content or describing such content belong in school libraries according to Rep. Wichtendahl and other misguided Democrats.
Again, children deserve protection. We should allow kids to be kids. We should preserve their innocence, not attack it.
While there are many reasons I am running for Iowa House in 2026, none are more important than standing up against the threat of radical gender ideology, radical sex changes on kids and radical obscene content in our schools that target kids rather than protect them.
