Every once and a while, there’s legislation so evil that even liberal Evangelical institutions will condemn it. Colorado House Bill 25-1312 is just that bad. The bill states that “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.” This means that parents who refuse to transgender their children have a legal basis for the government to take them away via family courts. Additionally, the bill defines “deadnaming and misgendering as discriminatory acts in the ‘Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act’, and prohibit these discriminatory acts in places of public accommodation.”
The bill advanced out of committee and heads to the Colorado Senate after passing the House. Should it clear the Senate, it’s doubtful that Governor Jared Polis, a homosexual Jew, would oppose such legislation.
But all month, there has been silence on the ground in Colorado to stand against this bill. The charge has been led in opposition to this bill by J Chase Davis, a Southern Baptist pastor in Boulder, Colorado, and William Wolfe, head of the Center For Baptist Leadership. On Thursday, plan to host a rally to oppose the bill.
Evidently, Joe Carter of The Gospel Coalition wants in on the fight, but he is more willing to postulate about the spiritual decline of Colorado than organize to oppose this legislation. He writes an article titled, “Colorado to Christian Parents: Surrender Your Faith or Surrender Your Children. Curiosuly absent is the partisan nature of this bill.
First, they targeted a baker. Now, they’re targeting parents.
Colorado’s anti-Christian trajectory became apparent in 2012, when Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips declined to create a wedding cake celebrating a same-sex ceremony. During a hearing on the case by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a commissioner said Phillips can believe “what he wants to believe” but cannot act on his religious beliefs “if he decides to do business in the state.” Now, 13 years later, Colorado lawmakers have shifted their sights from businesses to the family.
House Bill 25-1312—the deceptively named “Kelly Loving Act”—has cleared the Colorado House and advances to the Senate with minimal national attention. Yet its implications are staggering. Under this legislation, simply using your child’s birth name or biologically accurate pronouns could be legally classified as “coercive control,” potentially resulting in the loss of custody rights.
Who is they? It’s not simply the government, because 1312 counters multiple state governments who are cracking down on transgendering children? Joe Carter is too cowardly to name the Democrat Party, as his reader base is quite blue.
Davis laments the lack of big guns showing up to the fight.
Colorado resident and president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, John Stonestreet, recently went on his podcast to discuss this bill, but he provided no way forward other than to lament how blue Colorado has become. Glenn T. Stanton, the director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family, recently wrote in World Magazine about the draconian nature of the bills in the House.
However, Focus on the Family has not mobilized large numbers to rally Colorado churches, a contrast to the leadership they once regularly provided.
The time to get this bill killed is now, and Christians in Colorado need to mobilize because legacy institutions are not coming to the rescue.
One Response
I’m renaming Colorado to Pot-head-land. Don’t anybody deadbame it.