Colorado Democrats advanced bills to protect “gender-affirming health care” and to discourage “deadnaming” and “misgendering,” even allowing a parent’s opposition to transgenderism impact child custody decisions.
Both bills received preliminary approval in the Colorado House on Friday, according to a report from Colorado Newsline.
The first bill, known as House Bill 25-1309, would codify “gender-affirming health care treatments in statute” and actively prohibit “a health benefit plan from denying or limiting medically necessary gender-affirming health care.”
The legislation defines “gender-affirming health care” as any approach used to handle gender dysphoria.
Another bill, known as House Bill 25-1312, would define “deadnaming and misgendering as discriminatory acts” in places of public accommodation under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.
Many supporters of transgenderism classify “deadnaming” as calling someone by the name he or she used before starting to claim identity as the opposite sex, and “misgendering” as using pronouns that align with his or her actual sex rather than using preferred pronouns.
That legislation applies the new standards to child custody cases, adding that “when making child custody decisions and determining the best interests of a child for purposes of parenting time, 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.”
Democrats claimed the latter bill protects children from discrimination.
“Supporting a child’s gender identity is indeed in the best interest of the child, and that support cannot be used against a loving and supportive parent in a dispute,” Colorado State Rep. Rebekah Stewart insisted in defense of the bill she sponsored.
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“This bill is truly the least that we can do. Frankly, I wish that we didn’t have to bring this bill, but the reality of navigating the world today as a transgender human necessitates it,” she added.
But Republican lawmakers balked at the proposal, noting the ways in which the bill would erode parental rights should a child start to claim transgender identity.
“The idea that misgendering your own child is considered coercive control, which is another word for child abuse, because you want to get your child help instead of affirming their delusions,” Colorado State Rep. Jarvis Caldwell said, “this is the most disgusting bill I’ve seen so far.”
Christians especially voiced concern with the legislation as subversive to families who affirm biblical sexual ethics despite the assertions of the transgender movement.
Chase Davis, a pastor at The Well Church in Boulder, Colorado, wrote in a Friday article for the Center for Baptist Leadership that House Bill 25-1312 would “destroy the First Amendment freedoms of all Coloradans.”
The proposal would also “subject all Christians” who believe that God created mankind as male and female “to state-sanctioned persecution.”
Davis said in written testimony to Colorado lawmakers that the bill “stands in direct opposition to God’s created order, parental rights, and fundamental freedoms.”
“As a pastor, I reject this bill in the strongest possible terms, not only because it is an attack on free speech and parental authority, but because it is an assault on truth itself,” he added.
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