Francis Boggus is an experienced community development professional in rural Iowa communities and former Democratic State Central Committee member from Council Bluffs, now living in Des Moines. 

Recently, a friend who’s deciding whom to support in Iowa’s Democratic primaries sent me this video from the Des Moines Register’s “Storytellers Project” series in 2023. In the video, State Senator Sarah Trone Garriot (who is now running for Congress in Iowa’s third district) describes the first wedding she performed to marry a pair of Satanists.

I’ll be clear: I have no personal issue with Satanists. Like many other Iowans, I believe their First Amendment rights should be protected just like anyone else’s. I am no stranger to marriages that might be looked down upon—I was in an interracial marriage in the 1980s, and one of my daughters is married to a woman. Marriage equality across race, religion, and sexuality must be protected.

What bothers me is the tone Trone Garriott used when talking about working class people, whether they be in West Virginia or Iowa.