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Colorado Democrat Compares Parents Rights Groups to the KKK While Backing a Bill to Remove Custody Over ‘Misgendering’
A Democrat member of the Colorado House of Representatives justified excluding parental rights groups from discussions about a bill that would remove kids from parents’ custody for behaviors like “misgendering” and “deadnaming.”
She did so by comparing parental rights groups to the Ku Klux Klan in a hearing on Tuesday.
While witnesses in a hearing on House Bill 1312 said they had been working on the legislation for over a year, Jarvis Caldwell, a Republican member of the state House of Representatives, said that he only heard about it Monday.
“I really am curious about how much stakeholdering went on both sides of the issue and if parent groups that are not part of the LGBT community, if they were involved,” he said.
State Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Democrat, loudly condemned the idea of strategizing with parental rights groups on the bill.
“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.
Another Democrat, state Rep. Javier Mabrey, said, “There’s no reason to go to the table with people who are echoing the hateful rhetoric going around about the trans community.”
? SHAMEFUL ?Last night during closing statements on HB25-1312, Transgender Protections, two House Judiciary members referred to traditional parental rights groups as “hate groups” & compared them to the KKK. #coleg #copolitics pic.twitter.com/G0aP9zpJF2— Rep. Jarvis Caldwell (@RepCaldwell) April 3, 2025
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 dispute. 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. “Misgendering” involves referring to a person who claims to be transgender with the pronouns associated with their biological sex, rather than their preferred pronouns. “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 anti-discrimination is a reality for those who truly live life every day in fear of being discriminating against, retaliated against, harmed, harassed,” state Rep. Lorena Garcia, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, told The Denver Post.
Critics warn that a bill like this could make stories like that of California father Jeff Younger more likely in Colorado. Younger is battling in court to prevent his ex-wife from putting his son on experimental treatments to make him appear female.
“It prejudices the court by saying any non-affirmation of gender, anything short of actual celebration of the genital mutilation and the hormone therapy, the conversion, is discriminatory and is coercive control,” Rep. Ken DeGraaf, a Republican state house member, told The Daily Signal in an interview Friday. “It just prejudices the court in this civil arena.”
“This bill puts one parent waste-deep in a hole for the other one to start throwing stones at them,” he added.
Caldwell, the Republican who asked about stakeholders, told The Daily Signal that the bill creates a “legal imbalance that could lead to serious consequences for parents who do not affirm their child’s gender dysphoria.”
“I believe the ultimate intention of this bill is to make it impossible for a parent to get their child help when the child is gender confused by declaring such help as child abuse,” he added.
Heritage Action, a grassroots lobbying group, opposes the bill.
“This legislation seeks to impose radical gender ideology on Colorado families by penalizing parents for ‘misgendering’ or ‘deadnaming’ their children in custody disputes, effectively weaponing the state against parents who prioritize biological reality and constitutional rights over compelled speech,” Kristen Christensen, Heritage Action’s Colorado state director, told The Daily Signal. “It erodes local control by mandating schools abandon gender-based dress codes and forcing businesses to comply with subjective identity demands under the threat of fines.”
“This bill is an open assault on parent’s rights and free speech,” Christensen added.
Republican Criticism
Rep. Zokaie did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about her remarks, and neither did the bill’s Democrat sponsors in the Colorado House or Colorado Senate, but two House Republicans condemned them.
“While I cannot speak for Rep. Zokaie, I can say that parental rights groups that are fighting for their children are not organizations that should be equated with hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan; this is completely inappropriate,” Caldwell told The Daily Signal in a statement Thursday. “These groups are focused on advocating for parental involvement and ensuring parents have the authority in their children’s upbringing, especially in educational matters.”
Caldwell further said the comparison uses “inflammatory labels that are only meant to create division” and “dismisses the valid concerns of parents.”
“Calling parental advocacy groups ‘hate groups’ is just their excuse to marginalize and ignore them while maintaining a pretense of moral superiority,” DeGraaf told The Daily Signal.
Where Does This Come From?
Parental rights groups have faced this kind of vitriol before.
The Southern Poverty Law Center brands parental rights groups “anti-government extremist groups” and puts them on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC has long branded as “anti-LGBTQ hate groups” conservative and Christian organizations that oppose its activism on social issues. Last year, the SPLC branded an openly LGB organization, Gays Against Groomers, an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” in part because it opposes sexually explicit materials in school.
Numerous scandals have roiled the SPLC. The SPLC has apologized to celebrated neurosurgeon and former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson for branding him an “extremist” over his views on marriage. The group paid more than $3 million to settle a defamation lawsuit from a Muslim reformer it had branded an “anti-Islamic extremist.” A racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal led the group to fire its co-founder, Morris Dees, in 2019. After that scandal, employees unionized, and now the SPLC faces accusations of “union-busting” for laying off union members.
Amid that 2019 scandal, a former employee called the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.” Critics say the SPLC uses the “hate map” to exaggerate hate—terrifying donors into ponying up cash—and to demonize its political and ideological opponents.
DeGraaf, one of the Colorado Republicans, told The Daily Signal that his Democratic colleagues had cited the SPLC in previous legislative debates, despite its scandals.
He mocked Democrats’ citing of the SPLC.
“It says poverty, it’s southern. These people are for the oppressed,” he said, adopting the mentality of his opponents. “How dare you deign to question somebody with such a righteous name as the Southern Poverty Law Center?”
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