Iowa Senate Republicans re-introduced a Religious Freedom Restoration bill that's been shelved in several previous legislative sessions."What it does is it says that government must be held to the highest standards before it can infringe on a person's free exercise of religion," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Dennis Guth. Critics say the bill is yet another piece of legislation this year that targets the LGBTQ community."We've seen 15 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year, and this was just the latest, and we're leaving the entire nation for the number of anti-LGBTQ bills," said Damian Thompson with Iowa Safe Schools, a nonprofit that represents 10,000 LGBTQ youth statewide."It's very distressing for many of our students. I've seen firsthand mental health problems, risk of suicide, self-harm, etc, really accelerating this legislative session, because we're seeing problematic pieces of legislation like these ran all the time," said Thompson."It allows for discrimination against an already vulnerable group," said Mark Kende, a Drake Constitutional Law professor. "It really broadens the scope of protection, that people who want to assert religious freedom would assert while hurting people who might want something or a service from those individuals."Kende calls some of the language in this year's bill particularly "troubling.""That's sort of saying, even if you just sort of casually sometimes think you're religious, you can therefore deny service," said Kende. Kende says about 20 other states have passed similar bills. Some of those states have faced boycotts and lost millions in revenue from groups who refuse to go there. "Iowa can't afford in the middle of the COVID crisis and the economic downturn to be losing all that business," said Kende.But Guth says this is about making sure Iowans have their day in court to protect their religious freedoms."I want all people in the state of Iowa to be able to live and work according to their free conscience without having ideas being censored," said Guth. "During this time of kind of the cancel culture, I think the problem is not so much that people of faith are trying to push their religion on someone else, but that the secular world is trying to force their thoughts on people of faith."