Don’t ‘Ask The KKK’: Colorado Democrats Appear To Smear Parent Groups That Oppose Radical Trans Bill

Colorado Democrat lawmakers appeared to smear parental rights groups who oppose a radical new transgender bill, comparing the bill’s critics to “the KKK” during a Tuesday committee hearing.

The “Kelly Loving Act” targets parents who do not affirm their child’s new gender identity.

In child custody decisions, “a court shall consider deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s gender-affirming health-care services as types of coercive control,” the bill reads.

“Coercive control” also includes things like threatening to kill someone or forcing someone to commit crimes under Colorado law.

The bill was introduced late Friday evening, and on Tuesday it passed the Colorado Assembly’s Judiciary Committee in a 7-4 vote. It now heads to the Assembly floor for a second reading.

During Tuesday’s hearing, state Rep. Jarvis Caldwell, a Republican, told Democrats that he was up until 1 a.m. reading the bill. Republicans had less than 24 hours to mount a response despite Democrats apparently having the bill in the works for over a year, Caldwell told The Daily Wire.

“I really am curious about how much stakeholding went on both sides of the issue, and not just one side,” Caldwell said at the hearing, “and if parent groups that are not a part of the LGBT community, if they were involved.”

???? SHAMEFUL ????

Last night during closing statements on HB25-1312, Transgender Protections, two House Judiciary members referred to traditional parental rights groups as “hate groups” & compared them to the KKK. #coleg #copolitics pic.twitter.com/G0aP9zpJF2

— Rep. Jarvis Caldwell (@RepCaldwell) April 3, 2025

Two Democrats on the committee dismissed the idea that they had left parent groups and other critics out of the discussion, saying lawmakers do not have to discuss the bill with “hate groups” or people using “hateful rhetoric.”

“We don’t get to have a difference of opinion over somebody’s basic rights,” said Democratic state Rep. Yara Zokaie. “We’ve heard a lot about stakeholding and who was left out of stakeholding, and this process is important for us to understand the implications of the bills that we are passing, but a well stakeholded bill does not need to be discussed with hate groups.”

“We don’t ask someone passing civil rights legislation to go ask the KKK their opinion,” Zokaie said.

“If the audience could please hold the snaps,” the chairman said as supporters of the bill in the audience erupted.

Chairman Javier Mabrey, also a Democrat, said now is “our generational moment.”

“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,” Mabrey said.

Mabrey also took the opportunity to criticize President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

“The most powerful man on the planet is attacking kids” and “empowering the richest man on the planet to line his pocketbooks,” the chairman said.

“This fits within the tradition of our civil rights history,” he said.

Another Democrat on the committee, state Rep. Jennifer Bacon, agreed.

“For me it helped put myself in context to perhaps what people before me may have felt when we were, or they were advocating for other civil rights,” Bacon said.

“If there’s ever going to be a poster on this — we’ve seen John Carlos with the fist, we’ve seen Dr. King, I feel like if there is ever a poster about the change and the recognition of people, we are in it right now,” she said.