Eventually, the “Legal Protections for Transgender Individuals” law, if it passes, will be struck down by the courts as an unconstitutional suppression of free speech, but by then, damage will already have been done.
In the time it takes to wind its way through the legal system, public discourse will deteriorate, family relationships will be hurt, and schools will lose trust. The damage will be immense and unmendable.
Better that Colorado House Bill 1312 not become law in the first place. It has passed the House. Hopefully, sounder thinking will prevail in the state Senate, if not, in the governor’s office.
House Bill 1312 would empower public institutions to discriminate in many different ways against Coloradans who consider gender the same as biological sex, a genetically determined, immutable physical characteristic.
When deciding custody cases, one provision of the law would allow courts to discriminate against a parent who uses his or her child’s given name and biologically correct corresponding pronoun if the child is experiencing gender dysphoria. The court could favor the parent who chose instead to encourage a transgender child’s confusion and alienation from his or her body.
Consider a divorced man whose daughter experiences gender dysphoria. If the dad, chooses to gently affirm her biological reality by using her real name and pronouns, he could get less custody or perhaps none. This isn’t entirely hypothetical. A friend of mine faced this situation, fortunately, he lived in a state that protects parental rights and freedom of speech, and his custody was unaffected by this choice.
A law like this would have interfered with his parental right to steer his daughter toward acceptance of her body and biologically determined gender. It would have given his ex-wife a useful legal weapon to use against him.
That’s not all House Bill 1312 would do. It would mandate that public schools allow cross-dressing by students who wish to live as the opposite sex. The law would discriminate against schools that want to reduce distractions from learning by having students dress according to their biological sex. It would take decisions out of the hands of principals and school board members and put it into the hands of politicians.
Finally, the law would define calling a trans-identifying person by his or her former name or a pronoun associated with his or her biological sex as a discriminatory act under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. In cases of employment, housing, and public accommodation, by simply using one’s freedom of speech to utter a biologically factual pronoun, a person could find him or herself in the crosshairs of a Colorado Civil Rights Division investigation and punishment or possibly a lawsuit. That would be a clear violation of free speech.
Some Coloradans believe that gender is a self-selected characteristic that need not correspond to genetically determined biological sex. They have every right to hold that belief and to treat trans-identifying people by the gender of their choice and to raise their own children with this belief.
Other Coloradans consider gender tantamount to biological sex. They have the right to identify males and females by their biological sex and to guide their own children away from what they consider a harmful delusion.
Opinions on gender are diverse and individuals have the right to persuade others using facts and emotions. What they don’t have the right to do is create laws that limit free speech, override school policy, and interfere with parental decisions. It’s time to identify House Bill 1312 as a dead bill.
Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Krista Kafer: Law to protect transgender pronouns and dress comes with a steep price — free speech )
Also on site :
- Billboard’s 2025 Top Music Lawyers Revealed
- Semi-truck explosion, fire closes Interstate 65 in NW Indiana
- Cannes Film Festival’s Official Poster(s) For 2025 Honor Claude Lelouch’s ‘A Man And A Woman’