Keenan Crow is director of policy and advocacy for One Iowa and One Iowa Action.

I recently read with interest a guest commentary by Christine Hawes for the Des Moines Register. I’m always curious about other community members’ views on macro strategy, so I read it with an open mind.

I’m going to preface this response by saying I think Hawes is asking this question in good faith. For that reason, I’m going to give it a good faith answer. This piece comes from genuine concern, and any response should be treated with care, not with open hostility. Further, I agree with the author at least on the point that we should always be open to self-examination.

That said, I vehemently disagree with the approach this piece is advocating.

Hawes’ underlying premise is a request to throw our most marginalized under the bus in order to satiate the hunger of those currently in power. I am here to tell you as someone who has seen their appetites firsthand: they are insatiable.

This piece assumes there are good faith arguments to be had in these committee rooms. That we can simply reason with these folks and avoid the worst excesses of their anti-LGBTQ agenda. But that is not at all what we saw last week.

Proponents of the bill to remove civil rights from transgender Iowans told us it was about sports and bathrooms, two areas that are located almost exclusively in the public accommodations sections of the code. There were multiple amendments proposed on the bill to salvage credit, housing, and employment…areas which had no reasonable connection to sports or bathrooms.

How did the proponents respond? Sports and bathrooms, sports and bathrooms. No amendments. Over and over again we have tried to get even the smallest concessions on these bills, and over and over again we have been rebuffed. There are no reasonable conversations happening.

The key policy illustrated in Hawes’ piece, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, is also a great example of why we should call things what they are. The couple who ran the Gortz House in Grimes were at the center of the Iowa conversation surrounding this bill. Their business was fined because they refused service to a same-sex couple. Repeatedly the couple was trotted out to show what RFRA could do for Iowa. It could allow people to get away with LGBTQ discrimination. I don’t think it was a mistake to call it what it was: a targeted anti-LGBTQ bill which was covered in a thin veneer of religious liberties.

I agree with Hawes in several areas: we need to have more nuanced conversations, we need to think of innovative policies, and we need to accept dissent as a healthy component of any movement. I even agree with several of her policy prescriptions—for instance, making co-ed sports opportunities more available for children, and having more inclusive programs for gender non-conforming boys in traditionally masculine environments.

However, I do not agree that we must include in the conversation those who have demonstrated they are incapable of acting in good faith. If we give anti-LGBTQ legislators an inch, they will take a mile. If we tell them they can have trans athletes, they will take credit and housing protections too. If we throw our most marginalized aside to protect more “mainstream” ideas, we will end up with no protections and no community, as they watch us sell them out one by one for no appreciable gains.

I know folks are hurting, and I know they want a pathway forward, but appeasement isn’t it. The only way to stop these vicious attacks is to regain political power. Full stop. Anything short of that is a fool’s errand that will grant our opponents more time and energy for their next discriminatory endeavor.