Here’s Why One Colorado Democrat Voted Against the Bill Treating Transgender Wrongthink Like Child Abuse

One Democrat in the Colorado House of Representatives voted against a bill Sunday that would remove kids from parents’ custody for behaviors like “misgendering” and “deadnaming,” but he didn’t do so because he disagrees with transgender orthodoxy.

The bill, HB 1312, passed with 36 votes in favor, 20 against, and nine absent. Among Democrats, only state Rep. Bob Marshall voted against it. Marshall also voted for a bill protecting “gender-affirming care,” a euphemistic term for experimental transgender medical interventions.

Marshall told The Daily Signal he considers HB 1312 a likely overreaction to the new Trump administration’s attacks on the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement.

“This is a larger concern I have regarding the understandable reaction people are having to protect marginalized groups from the overly zealous onslaught in the new administration against diversity, equity and inclusion,” he wrote in an email statement. “People are demanding: ‘Do something!’ But the ‘something’ can push back so hard we may push back farther than where we might have said was the right place to be in calmer times.”

Marshall told The Daily Signal he had “serious concerns regarding overreach” in HB 1312, “particularly in the sections related to child custody issues and federal constitutional issues over full faith and credit.”

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.

The bill would ban “deadnaming” and “misgendering” in places of public accommodation. It would also prohibit a Colorado court from “applying or giving any force or effect to another state’s law that authorizes a state agency to remove a child from the child’s parent or guardian because the parent or guardian allowed the child to receive gender-affirming health care services.”

The bill’s supporters say the legislation is necessary to combat discrimination against people who identify as transgender.

Other Avenues to Fight ‘Discrimination’

Marshall said minors who identify as transgender and the parents who support that identity already have legal protections against parents who disagree, so the legislation is unnecessary.

“Much of the discrimination issues of concern I think should also be addressed under normal common law torts like intentional infliction of emotional distress or negligent infliction of emotional distress,” the Democrat told The Daily Signal.

In other words, if a boy identifies as a girl and his father refuses to call him “she” while the mother disagrees, custody courts might already consider the father’s “non-affirmation” a form of “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

“I fully support non-discrimination efforts for the LGBTQ+ community,” Marshall told The Daily Signal. “And I voted for, and strongly backed, the gender-affirming care bill, including going to the well to push back on the GOP’s efforts to amend the bill to prohibit any gender affirming care for those under 18 years old.”

The ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ Bill

That bill, HB 1309, codifies medical interventions to make a male appear female or vice versa into statute and forbids any health care plan from denying or limiting coverage for such interventions when prescribed by a health care provider.

The bill also exempts prescriptions for testosterone from tracking requirements and hides records of the prescriptions, even though testosterone has not been formally approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent condition of identifying with the gender opposite one’s biological sex).

Marshall condemned Republican opposition to the bill as “ridiculous” because “97% of gender-affirming surgeries are on those under 18 years old for gynecomastia,” a condition of enlarged breast tissue in males. (This condition is separate from the trend of biological females removing healthy breast tissue in order to appear more like males.)

He asked whether “we really want to condemn 12-18 year old teenage boys to the mistreatment and bullying that will certainly occur if they are growing breasts while in junior high/high school and want to play football or wrestle when we can do something to help/fix the issue?”

He attributed opposition to this “simply because of animosity towards the very existence of transgender kids/people.”

State Rep. Jarvis Caldwell, a Republican who opposes HB 1309, countered Marshall’s claims in remarks for The Daily Signal.

“You can support actual medically necessary procedures without forcing everyone with a health care plan to pay higher premiums in order to offset the costs of permanently mutilating children,” Caldwell said.

The Full Faith and Credit Clause

The full faith and credit clause in Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, states that each state must give “full faith and credit” to “the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.”

Marshall is concerned that HB 1312 may violate the full faith and credit clause by blocking the effect of other state’s laws on custody.

The Colorado bill has drawn nationwide attention after another Democrat, state Rep. Yara Zokaie, compared parental rights groups to the Ku Klux Klan in a hearing on the bill. She later doubled down on the comparison, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center. Marshall did not respond to The Daily Signal’s question as to whether he agrees with Zokaie’s comparison.

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