by WorldTribune Staff, April 8, 2025 Real World News
Parents in Colorado could lose custody of their children for such things as "misgendering" and "deadnaming," according to legislation passed by the state House of Representatives on Sunday.
Democrats who pushed the bill through 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 legislation. The Colorado House of Representatives has 43 Democrats and 22 Republicans.
“After preventing us from the ability to debate, Colorado House Democrats rammed through HB 1312,” Republican state Rep. Jarvis Caldwell told The Daily Signal. “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.
The legislation's summary states: “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 bill defines “coercive control” as including “deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s gender-affirming health care services.”
“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.
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,” Caldwell said.
In a hearing on the bill last week, Democrat state Rep. Yara Zokaie compared parental rights groups to the Ku Klux Klan.
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,” Zokaie said.
HB 1312 next heads 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.
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