Iowa 4-H Leader Fired For Defending LGBT Inclusion: Report

The head of Iowa’s 4-H, a national agriculture-based youth development group, was allegedly fired this year after defending a LGBT inclusive policy, according to a Sunday report from the Des Moines Register. The drama began in March, when the national organization posted a policy welcoming LGBT children to their organization, which boasts more than six million members. Days later, the chief of staff for U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue asked that the policy be rescinded, prompting the National Institute of Food and Agriculture—the department that administers 4-H—to email states including New York and Iowa to ask that the policy be pulled from their websites. John-Paul Chaisson-Cárdenas, the director of Iowa’s 4-H, resisted efforts to pull the policy, arguing that the group should be for “all kids.” It's a decision that he claims eventually led to his firing in August after the state organization faced pushback from conservative groups. “I’m paying a very heavy price for doing it, and I don't regret it for a single second,” he told the Register. “It was the right thing to do.”