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Republican lawmakers and parent activists of all political views are hoping to block a Colorado bill that would end the custody rights of parents who do not affirm the new “gender identities” of their children.
The legislation has passed the state House but has yet to advance in the state Senate.
As CatholicVote previously reported, the Colorado House voted 36-20 on April 6 – mostly along party lines – to pass HB 25-1312 and send it to the state Senate.
Now, Republican lawmakers – in the minority – and parents who identify with different political parties are joining together to fight the measure, which many are calling a “totalitarian” piece of legislation.
The bill would make “misgendering” and “deadnaming,” i.e., calling a child by his or her birth name, acts of “discrimination” and, therefore, abusive.
Additionally, the measure would prohibit a Colorado court “from applying or giving any force or effect to another state’s law that authorizes a state agency to remove a child from the child’s parent or guardian because the parent or guardian allowed the child to receive gender-affirming health-care services.”
Colorado mom Erin Lee said during an interview with Fox News’ “The Faulkner Focus” on Monday that the measure “is giving the authority to our state to take our children away if we don’t agree with these gender transitions, so it’s got huge ramifications for all parents, especially those in custody situations who are fighting with their ex-spouses to stop their children from being medicalized.”
Lee added that the bill “opens the door for all parents to potentially have their children forcibly removed by the state if they’re not willing to affirm their child’s mental health distress.”
Lee and California attorney and parent activist Erin Friday are both moms of daughters who, at one time, believed they were boys, but then later resolved their gender issues and now live comfortably as girls.
Neither of the two moms ever “affirmed” her child’s other gender identities, a fact that led the women to write last week in an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal that the Colorado bill under consideration “would define parents like us as child abusers.”
Lee and Friday described the bill as one intent on turning upside-down the natural relationship between parents and children.
“HB25-1312 would invert the parent-child relationship by granting children authority over their parents,” they wrote. “Minors would have the legal power to determine their name and the pronouns by which others refer to them, compelling their parents to conform under threat of legal consequence. Children could report their parents to state authorities, a hallmark of totalitarian regimes. The law would influence how extended family members, the media and the general public refer to the child.”
State Rep. Rose Pugliese, R-Colorado Springs, told “The Faulkner Focus” on Friday that the Democrat-led bill is an “attack on parental rights, that if you don’t follow a certain ideology, that you can be in violation of discrimination [laws].”
“It’s just a bridge too far for parents,” Pugliese added. “And I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Republican, or unaffiliated, parental rights is an issue that transcends party lines.”
Friday, who identified herself as a “life-long Democrat,” said the bill is a “massive First Amendment violation” that must be fought in both the courts and the press.
In their op-ed, Lee and Friday observed that some Democrats, including Reps. Yara Zokaie, Fort Collins, and Javier Mabrey, Denver, “have likened parents like us to Klansmen, and their legislation is expected to pass the state Senate and proceed to Gov. Jared Polis’s [D] desk.”
“HB25-1312 would compel people to affirm the lie that sex is a matter of personal choice rather than biology,” the two moms asserted. “It is an assault on reality and on the foundational freedom that makes the United States a beacon of liberty.”