The minority leader of the Colorado House of Representatives warned that a bill making its way in the Colorado Senate represents a “huge violation of parental rights.”
The state Senate will hear testimony about House Bill 1312, which would remove kids from parents’ custody for behaviors like “misgendering” and “deadnaming,” on Wednesday. The bill passed the state House earlier this month 36-20, with nine members absent, in a largely party-line vote.
“As parents, we have the God-given right to raise our children in the way that we see fit,” House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, a Republican, told The Daily Signal in an interview Friday. “We all take issue with the notion that if you don’t subscribe to a certain ideology, that that could affect your parental rights or even custody of our children.”
“This is an issue that transcends party lines,” she added. “I don’t think this is a Republican or Democrat issue. I think this really truly is a people-of-Colorado issue.”
Pugliese called the bill a “huge violation of parental rights,” and warned Democrats that it represents “a bridge too far,” not just for Republicans, but for all Coloradans.
What Does the Bill Do?
According to the bill summary, HB 1312 defines “coercive control” as including “deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s gender-affirming health care services.”
“A court shall consider reports of coercive control when determining the allocation of parental responsibilities in accordance with the best interests of the child,” the summary adds.
These provisions would effectively require parents to endorse gender ideology in order to maintain custody of their own children in a custody dispute between parents. Gender ideology teaches that a person’s internal sense of gender overrides his or her biological sex.
“Deadnaming” involves referring to an individual who claims to be transgender by the name that person has rejected rather than the new name that he or she has chosen. “Misgendering” involves referring to a person who claims to be transgender with the pronouns associated with his or her biological sex rather than the pronouns he or she prefers to be associated with. “Gender-affirming health care” is a euphemism for experimental medical interventions designed to make a man appear female or vice versa.
Supporters frame the bill as an attempt to prevent anti-transgender discrimination.
“This bill is about ensuring that what we say exists with antidiscrimination is a reality for those who truly live life every day in fear of being discriminated against, retaliated against, harmed, harassed,” state Rep. Lorena Garcia, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, told The Denver Post.
Loud Backlash
The bill has garnered nationwide attention after Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Democrat, compared parental rights groups to the Ku Klux Klan in a hearing on the bill.
When Rep. Jarvis Caldwell, a Republican, asked whether “parent groups that are not part of the LGBT community” were involved in discussing the bill, Zokaie ridiculed the idea.
“A well-stakeholded bill does not need to be discussed with hate groups, and we don’t ask someone passing civil rights legislation to go ask the KKK their opinion,” she quipped.
Zokaie later doubled down on the comparison, explicitly citing the Southern Poverty Law Center. Critics claim the SPLC has used its history in suing Klan groups into bankruptcy to demonize mainstream conservative and Christian organizations. The SPLC puts out a “hate map” that plots religious freedom law firms like Alliance Defending Freedom and parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty alongside Klan chapters. The “hate map” has inspired an act of domestic terrorism.
“Obviously, parents who are advocating to be able to raise their children are not members of the KKK, right?” Pugliese told The Daily Signal. “We discount any sort of blanket name-calling.”
She said the Senate’s consideration of the bill represents an opportunity for “grassroots activist parents who are not engaged in the legislative process” to make their voices heard.
“Having their voices at the Capitol is so important, so Democrats can really see the gravity of this issue and that people across Colorado all feel united in their protection of parental rights,” Pugliese added.
The backlash may already have delivered some results.
While the bill passed the state House, LGBTQ activist groups have reportedly distanced themselves from it.
Jax Gonzalez, the political director of the LGBTQ group One Colorado, urged lawmakers to support HB 1312 in early April, but a couple weeks later, Gonzalez told the bill’s supporters that the group was hedging its support and would seek changes to the proposal, The Denver Post reported. One of the bill’s supporters responded angrily in an email to Gonzalez, accusing the political director of “betrayal.”
After a brief delay, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced last week that it would hold a hearing for the bill on Wednesday.
Can It Be Stopped?
Democrats enjoy a trifecta in Colorado, with Jared Polis occupying the Governor’s Mansion and with majorities in the House (43 Democrats to 22 Republicans) and Senate (23 Democrats to 12 Republicans).
Even so, House Minority Leader Pugliese expressed hope about stopping HB 1312.
“I do believe 1312 is an issue where people across the aisle are working on taking out those egregious provisions,” she told The Daily Signal. “I believe it’s something that even the governor potentially could support.”
Pugliese says she works with survivors of domestic violence, and many survivors expressed alarm about the bill’s provisions regarding custody.
“I think it’s really scary to a lot of domestic violence survivors who see this as potential opening the door for their custody to be taken away if they don’t subscribe to the ideology,” she said.
