CO Bill Would Give Parent Pushing Trans Insanity Custody Of Kids

Far-left members of the Colorado state House advanced a bill on Tuesday evening that would direct courts considering child custody cases to favor parents who push radical gender ideology and penalize parents who do not “affirm” their child’s identification as “transgender.”

The bill, introduced last Friday night, passed out of the Colorado House Judiciary Committee in a 7-4 vote on Tuesday and heads to the floor for a second reading on April 4.

“House Bill 1312 is an egregious step towards solidifying Colorado as a Trans Sanctuary State. This bill requires a court to give priority consideration for custody to the parent that affirms a child’s gender dysphoria,” Republican state Rep. Jarvis Caldwell told The Federalist. “The parent who disagrees and tries to get the child actual help is now guilty of committing child abuse, referred [to] in the bill as ‘coercive control.’ The bill also ignores other state[s’] court rulings if one parent brings a child to Colorado for gender-affirming care; directly violating Article IV, Section 1, known as the Full Faith and Credit Clause, of the U.S. Constitution.”

When courts consider child custody, “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,” the bill states. “Deadnaming” and “misgendering” would officially be considered “discriminatory acts” if the bill passes.

Democrats hold significant majorities in both chambers, and Democrat Gov. Jared Polis has already signed radical transgender bills in the past.

In Colorado, “coercive control” also includes things like threatening to murder someone, “threatening to commit suicide … as a method of coercion,” and other extreme behavior, but the new bill would punish parents for simply looking out for the best social, psychological, and medical interests of their child by not allowing him to start down a path of dangerous, experimental, and irreversible medical decisions.

The bill would also block Colorado courts from working with other states that remove a child from a parent’s custody for allowing the child to get trans medical interventions, and it requires school policies that allow children to use a different name to be “inclusive of all reasons that a student might adopt a chosen name.” Dress codes are also not allowed to be enforced based on sex.

As The Federalist reported, that kind of conditioning of children makes them more likely to pursue medical interventions like chemical castration and genital mutilation, which many later regret, whereas leaving children to grow naturally almost always ends in them getting over their gender confusion.

“The heartbreaking stories of parents like the Colorado father fighting to protect his son from medical harm, Cindy Stein in Durango, and countless others across our state reveal a terrifying pattern: the state, under Democratic control, is facilitating the separation of children from their parents — not for abuse, but for refusing to affirm an ideology,” Lori Gimelshteyn, executive director of the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network (CPAN), told The Federalist. “HB25-1312 would cement that practice into law, allowing courts to treat a parent’s love, guidance, and belief as ‘coercive control.’ This is not support — it’s state-enabled kidnapping under the guise of compassion. Parenting is not a crime. It is a sacred responsibility to protect and raise a child with wisdom and care, even when it means saying no.”

According to Caldwell, the bill was introduced late Friday, and, despite the norm of giving lawmakers two weeks to prepare before a bill enters committee, Republicans were given fewer than 24 hours.

Erin Lee, a mother who testified against the bill, said her 12-year-old daughter was “secretly transitioned in her sixth grade classroom” after displaying “normal pubescent discomfort,” but being told that the discomfort meant she was really a boy.

“By the time we found out about this classroom-to-clinic pipeline she was on, we were threatened with the suicide myth and bullied with the words ‘Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?’” Lee said. “If this law was in place four years ago when CPS came to my door for non-affirmation, I would have lost my child. But thank God I wasn’t forced to transition her because my child’s scariest moments were in the deep, dark pit of rapid-onset gender dysphoria.”

Lee described a phenomenon in Colorado and other left-wing states that makes them a “transition” mills for crazed ex-spouses who want to force their children to identify as trans and pursue harmful medical procedures. The Federalist recently reported on a father in Colorado who is trying to prevent his son from being caught in one such “transition” mill.

“I have spoken to dozens of fathers in this state and others … whose exes are here medically transitioning their children without any care or caution against their will,” she continued. “Trans-identified kids have long been used as a weapon in custody battles. How ironic that this bill defines ‘coercive control’ as not affirming a child’s mental illness, when in fact this bill blows the door wide open for ‘coercive control’ by the parents who wish to sterilize and mutilate their children’s healthy bodies against the parents who question their children being sterilized and castrated, or even just express caution.”

Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.