Lawmakers pushing for this madness might deserve to reap a political whirlwind and a judicial rebuke, but how many children will be harmed in the meantime?
State lawmakers pushing for this madness might deserve to reap a political whirlwind and a judicial rebuke, but how many children of Colorado will be harmed in the meantime?
T olerance is said to be the virtue of the man without convictions. Among the simplest of convictions would be that a boy cannot become a girl. In Colorado, that conviction is being sacrificed in service of a false “tolerance” for mutilating procedures that put radical ideology ahead of children’s health.
House Bill 25-1309 would require insurance companies to cover so-called “gender-affirming” drugs and procedures for both children and adults, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and the removal of healthy breasts and genitalia.
House Bill 25-1312 would require courts to consider as a form of “coercive control” — a subtle euphemism for child abuse — actions like “misgendering” a child or using a child’s legally accurate birth name (rather than the “chosen” name of the child) in child custody decisions. And if a court from another state gives custody to a parent who affirms a child’s biological sex, the bill directs Colorado courts to ignore that decision and instead award custody to the parent who pushes the child toward transition.
And what about parents who still maintain the conviction (and a firm grip on reality) that sex is God-given and immutable, and that seeking to alleviate a child’s distress by permanently damaging and disfiguring a healthy body is the epitome of neo-gnostic hubris? Well, those convictions won’t be tolerated in Colorado.
Moreover, if parents seek compassionate counseling for their child to embrace biological reality and their identity as image-bearers of God, male and female, any counselor who speaks such a message in Colorado is subject to steep fines and even losing his or her license. That ultimately hurts kids, who are deprived of honest conversations with a counselor who can help explore the root causes of their discomfort with their bodies. Alliance Defending Freedom is challenging that law in Chiles v. Salazar, which the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this fall to address the state’s blatant censorship.
What we’re witnessing in Colorado is the time-proven progression of tolerance (improperly understood) to tyranny. What begins as tolerance (“You should tolerate my transgender identity; it doesn’t impact you”) quickly moves to acceptance (“Transgender people exist; deal with it”). Next comes celebration (“You should bring your child to drag queen story hour and attend the parades of depravity the entire month of June”), finally ending at participation (“The government will force insurers to pay for the irrevocable damage to children and deem noncompliant parents as abusive and unfit to raise their child”).
But, as Colorado’s recent history demonstrates, bad legislation often leads to good case law. Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and 303 Creative v. Elenis serve as necessary reminders from the Supreme Court to Colorado that the First Amendment is not a suggestion, and Chiles may soon join them. If these new bills are signed into law, Colorado will find itself in court again, this time to be served a reminder that the family predates the government, parental rights are pre-political and written in the “laws of nature and nature’s God,” and government dictating one state-approved approach to parenting is anathema to natural law, ordered liberty, the U.S. Constitution, common sense, and decency.
Will the taxpayers of Colorado ever tire of paying for these lessons? Will the voters of Colorado eventually say, “Enough is enough?” Should the U.S. Supreme Court create an express lane for the Rocky Mountain State? The lawmakers pushing for this madness in Colorado might deserve to reap a political whirlwind and a judicial rebuke, but how many children of Colorado will be harmed in the meantime?
Mounting evidence indicates that the overwhelming majority of gender-dysphoric children will resolve the dysphoria if allowed to experience natural puberty and receive counseling rather than puberty blockers and hormones. Nations like Great Britain and others, once on the leading edge of medical intervention, have taken significant steps back from blocking puberty or advocating for hormonal and surgical procedures. The U.K.’s. supreme court, not exactly a bastion of conservative jurisprudence, has stated that male and female are defined by biology. A wave of malpractice lawsuits brought by de-transitioners against the medical community, which placed them on a one-way path to sterility, sexual dysfunction, and a lifetime of patienthood, has yet to crest.
Still, Colorado lawmakers persist, unencumbered by truth or self-awareness. I guess we’ll see them in court again.