A Colorado state lawmaker is likening parental rights groups opposed to a bill that, if passed and signed into law, could lead to removing children from their parents’ custody if they oppose trans medicalization. The lawmaker said such parents were akin to the KKK.
Colorado Republican state Rep. Jarvis Caldwell shared audio from an April 1 Colorado House of Representatives Judiciary Committee meeting where lawmakers were debating House Bill 25-1312. The bill has wide-ranging implications and is designed to give wide deference to several aspects of LGBT ideology, specifically by directing courts to take a parent’s willingness to embrace their child’s chosen gender identity into consideration when determining custody agreements.
“We heard from multiple witnesses that this bill has been worked on for over a year,” said Caldwell, who raised concerns that even he had just found out about the bill a day earlier.
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“I really am curious about how much stakeholdering went on both sides of the issue and if parent groups that are not a part of the LGBT community, if they were involved,” Caldwell told his colleagues on the committee.
Democratic state Rep. Yara Zoakie responded by asserting, “A well stakeholded bill does not need to be discussed with hate groups and we don’t ask someone passing civil rights legislation to go ask the KKK their opinion.”
Zoakie’s comments suggest that she views parental rights groups opposed to the sweeping legislation as akin to the Ku Klux Klan, the hate group known for terrorizing African Americans in the decades following the Civil War.
Democratic state Rep. Javier Maroney agreed with Zoakie’s perspective: “I agree. There’s no reason to go to the table with people who are echoing the hateful rhetoric going around about the trans community.”
House Bill 25-1312 ultimately passed the Democrat-controlled Colorado House in a 38-20 vote on Sunday. The vote for the legislation fell along party lines, with all but one Democrat backing the measure and all other opposition to it coming from Republicans. The bill now heads to the Democrat-controlled Colorado Senate.
Also known as the Kelly Loving Act, House Bill 25-1312 defines “Coercive control” as “a pattern of threatening, humiliating, or intimidating actions, including assaults or other abuse, that is used to harm, punish, or frighten an individual.” Examples of actions that constitute so-called coercive control include “deadnaming or misgendering.”
The legislation defines deadnaming as “to purposefully, and with the intent to disregard the individual’s gender identity or gender expression, refer to an individual by their birth name rather than their chosen name.”
Likewise, the measure defines misgendering as “to purposefully, and with the intent to disregard the individual’s gender identity or gender expression, refer to an individual using an honorific or pronoun that conflicts with the individual’s gender identity or gender expression.”
The legislation directs courts in the state to “determine the allocation of parental responsibilities, including parenting time and decision-making responsibilities, in accordance with the best interests of the child, giving paramount consideration to the child’s safety and the physical, mental, and emotional conditions and needs of the child.” The courts are asked to consider “Any report related to domestic violence or coercive control” when making such a decision.
The measure further declares: “It is against the public policy of this state for the law of another state to authorize or require a state agency to remove a child from the child’s parent or guardian because the parent or guardian assisted the child in obtaining gender-affirming health-care service.”
The term gender-affirming health-care service refers to the body deforming procedures performed on individuals exhibiting gender confusion, known as gender dysphoria.
Examples of such trans procedures include: puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries involving the mutilation of healthy body parts, such as a double mastectomy, hysterectomy and castration. More than two dozen states have banned some or all types of these procedures due to concerns about their long-term impact on patients’ mental, emotional and physical health.
Another section of the legislation establishes requirements for school dress codes, stating that any dress code or uniform requirement implemented by a school board “must not create or enforce any rules based on gender, and must allow each student to abide by any variation of the dress code.”
The measure also contains new requirements governing places of public accommodation, prohibiting it as a “discriminatory practice and unlawful to, with specific intent to discriminate, publish materials that deadname or misgender an individual.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
