When this change happened, we lived in Iowa, where we had plenty of affordable, kid-friendly restaurants to choose from. This was a hard-earned milestone for my wife and me. After so many failed outings when the kids were younger—a diaper blowout in a bathroom the size of a closet, $12 macaroni left untouched for being the “wrong” color cheese—dinner out had suddenly become a treat, a chance to feed hungry bellies without doing dishes. After the meal, we always stacked our plates and wiped the floor beneath the table to foster goodwill on behalf of all parents. We would ask for a box, and the bill.
When people ask why we left Iowa, there’s no simple answer. No single event was the tipping point. Rather, we began to feel increasingly unwelcome, squeezed out. What had been a blue state in the presidential elections for more than two decades (save for 2004, by a razor-thin margin) went deep red in a relatively quick period of time.
Read more: I Served My Country. Now I’m Fleeing Kansas
Sometimes a waitress would smile at our children as they organized the sugar packets and ask, “Whose?”, her finger metronoming between my wife and me. When we said, “They’re both of ours,” she would be confused, for which we would be apologetic and unnecessarily cheerful. Food was delicious! Busy here tonight! Life in Iowa involved a lot of this—managing the temperature in the room when the issue of queerness arose. But our politeness never mattered. Even after such an exchange, the waitress would still bring two checks, our family structure too foreign to calculate.
So we moved to Illinois. We traded our big, affordable house on a street with Trump signs for a smaller house with triple the mortgage, on a street with pride flags. Our property taxes doubled, and public school fees quadrupled. But not a single neighbor asked if we were sisters when we showed up with a moving truck. At school, all kids are welcome; there’s no fuss over the bathrooms kids use or the sports they play or what anyone is wearing.
We are lucky, my wife and I, in an age when many transgender people have to worry about their safety in public restrooms and when brown skin can be a target for government violence. We are lucky to have the ability to uproot our shared life and plant it elsewhere. A GLAAD report published in 2025 found that most LGBTQ adults in the United States expect violence, threats, and discrimination to increase in the next year. The Trevor Project reported last year that 39% of LGBTQ young people and their families have considered relocating to a friendlier state. Yet only about 5% have made the move. One potential reason for the lack of movement is affordability.
As of today, the ACLU is tracking 30 anti-LGBTQ bills in Iowa. When I read from my new home stories of Iowans facing book bans, drag show bans, and DEI program bans, I feel relieved to be gone.
But there’s sadness, too, for those who can’t leave, especially LGBTQ youth who deserve to grow up in a community that protects them.
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