‘CROSSED THE RUBICON’: Colorado House Passes Bill Treating as Child Abuse Dissent From Transgender Orthodoxy

The Colorado House of Representatives passed a bill Sunday that would remove kids from parents’ custody for behaviors like “misgendering” and “deadnaming” after Democrats cited the Southern Poverty Law Center to justify excluding parental rights groups from discussion on the bill.

The bill, HB 1312, passed with 36 votes in favor, 20 against, and nine absent in a largely party-line vote. One Democrat, Bob Marshall, voted against the bill.

The Colorado House of Representatives has 43 Democrats and 22 Republicans.

Rep. Jarvis Caldwell, a Republican, accused the House Democrats of silencing debate on the issue because they knew their position is unpopular.

“After preventing us from the ability to debate, Colorado House Democrats rammed through HB 1312,” Caldwell told The Daily Signal in a statement Monday. “It’s codifying into law that if their ideology confuses your child, and you don’t affirm that delusion, you’re committing child abuse and can lose custody of your child.”

“We have now crossed the Rubicon of parental rights with this bill,” he added.

Caldwell noted that the Democrat majority invoked Rule 16, which calls the question and ends debate, leading to a vote. “I believe they did this to silence us because they know how much negative attention this has been getting nationwide,” he said in a video message Sunday.

Comparing Parents to the KKK

The bill has garnered nationwide attention after Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Democrat, compared parental rights groups to the Ku Klux Klan in a hearing on the bill last week.

When Caldwell asked whether “parent groups that are not part of the LGBT community” were involved in discussing the bill, Zokaie ridiculed the idea.

“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,” she quipped.

Zokaie doubled down on the comparison on Friday, explicitly citing the Southern Poverty Law Center. Critics claim the SPLC has used its history in suing Klan groups into bankruptcy to demonize mainstream conservative and Christian organizations. The SPLC puts out a “hate map” that plots religious freedom law firms like Alliance Defending Freedom and parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty alongside Klan chapters. The “hate map” has inspired an act of domestic terrorism.

“I will call those groups hateful, and I am not the only person who has done so,” Zokaie said. “Some of the groups in opposition to this bill are on a list of hate groups maintained by one of the most well-known civil rights law firms, and yes I will compare that to saying it’s like asking someone working on civil rights legislation to consult with white supremacist groups, and I will do that unapologetically.”

What Does the Bill Do?

According to the bill summary, HB 1312 defines “coercive control” as including “deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s gender-affirming health care services.”

“A court shall consider reports of coercive control when determining the allocation of parental responsibilities in accordance with the best interests of the child,” the summary adds.

These provisions would effectively require parents to endorse gender ideology in order to maintain custody of their own children in a dispute. Gender ideology teaches that a person’s internal sense of gender overrides his or her biological sex.

“Deadnaming” involves referring to an individual who claims to be transgender by the name that person has rejected. “Misgendering” involves referring to a person who claims to be transgender with the pronouns associated with their biological sex, rather than their preferred pronouns. “Gender-affirming health care” is a euphemism for experimental medical interventions designed to make a man appear female or vice versa.

Supporters frame the bill as an attempt to prevent anti-transgender discrimination.

“This bill is about ensuring that what we say exists with anti-discrimination is a reality for those who truly live life every day in fear of being discriminating against, retaliated against, harmed, harassed,” state Rep. Lorena Garcia, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, told The Denver Post.

A Danger to Parental Custody

Critics warn that a bill like this could make stories like that of California father Jeff Younger more likely in Colorado. Younger is battling in court to prevent his ex-wife from putting his son on experimental treatments to make him appear female.

“It prejudices the court by saying any non-affirmation of gender, anything short of actual celebration of the genital mutilation and the hormone therapy, the conversion, is discriminatory and is coercive control,” state Rep. Ken DeGraaf, a Republican, told The Daily Signal in an interview Friday. “It just prejudices the court in this civil arena.”

“This bill puts one parent waist-deep in a hole for the other one to start throwing stones at them,” he added.

Caldwell, the Republican who asked about stakeholders, told The Daily Signal that the bill creates a “legal imbalance that could lead to serious consequences for parents who do not affirm their child’s gender dysphoria.”

“I believe the ultimate intention of this bill is to make it impossible for a parent to get their child help when the child is gender confused by declaring such help as child abuse,” he added.

Heritage Action, a grassroots lobbying group, opposes the bill.

“This legislation seeks to impose radical gender ideology on Colorado families by penalizing parents for ‘misgendering’ or ‘deadnaming’ their children in custody disputes, effectively weaponing the state against parents who prioritize biological reality and constitutional rights over compelled speech,” Kristen Christensen, Heritage Action’s Colorado state director, told The Daily Signal. “It erodes local control by mandating schools abandon gender-based dress codes and forcing businesses to comply with subjective identity demands under the threat of fines.”

“This bill is an open assault on parents’ rights and free speech,” Christensen added.

What Happens Next?

HB 1312 will head to the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee. If the bill proceeds out of committee, it will head to the state Senate, which has a 23-12 Democrat majority.

Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, generally supports transgender orthodoxy.

The post ‘CROSSED THE RUBICON’: Colorado House Passes Bill Treating as Child Abuse Dissent From Transgender Orthodoxy appeared first on The Daily Signal.