3 ballot measures introduced in Colorado to combat trans agenda

Pro-child and pro-family advocates in Colorado are proposing three ballot measures to push back against the state’s pro-transgender stance supported by the Democrat-controlled government.

The proposals, which need 125,000 signatures each to get on the ballot, would safeguard children from sex trafficking, keep males out of female sports and ban irreversible sex change surgeries for minors.

Advocates unveiled the initiatives this week at the Rocky Mountain Summit on Safeguarding Children from Gender-Affirming Treatment, a gathering that convened medical experts, a whistle-blower and parental advocates who shared their experiences battling the transgender agenda. 

“Let’s move forward together to protect children, to support families and protect parental rights and restore the integrity of education and healthcare,” said Lori Gimelshteyn, the conference organizer and head of Colorado Parents Action Network (CPAN). “The harms are real. The harms are happening. The consequences are unfolding around us, and yet we are still here. We’re all standing together.” 

The event featured testimony from Erin Lee and her daughter Chloe, who was invited to a middle school art club that was being used by teachers to groom kids to be transgender. 

The parents fought back, eventually removing Chloe from public school, but it took almost a year for her to accept her biological gender. 

“Going to the club offered me instant community if I just called myself transgender or gay,” said Chloe, now 16, who was new to the school. “They told me if I was uncomfortable in my body then transgender is what I was, and I was really uncomfortable. Puberty wasn’t fun, and I wasn’t like the other girls. My interests have always been different. 

“I didn’t know it at the time, but connection was what I was yearning for. I just wanted people to connect with and I realize that now.” 

Chloe said she’s grateful her parents confronted the issue directly. 

“My mom asked me not too long ago, if we had affirmed the transgender identity, where would you be today? I told her, I don’t think I would be alive. Honestly, being a transgender never made me happy. Looking back on it all, it was a dark path devoid of any of the things I was told being trans would provide.”  

Jamie Reed, a medical whistleblower, shared how a doctor she used to work for in Missouri fled to Colorado because of the state’s shield laws for physicians who perform sex changes on minors. The state has continued to pass laws promoting transgenderism and is now advancing proposals that threaten basic parental rights. 

“I called Dr. Lewis, my primary endocrinologist that I worked with, and I said to him on the phone, ‘Chris, I can’t do this anymore. We’re hurting these patients.’ And his response was, ‘I know, what do you want me to do about it?’ 

“And I said, ‘We have to just stop.’ And he said, ‘The only way is we have to stop all of it.’ And I said, ‘Okay, great. How do we do that? We have to just shut it all down. It all has to stop.’ He’s like, ‘We can’t do that. We just can’t do that.’ 

“I don’t want to sound dramatic, but this is a civilization ending concept,” she said later. “If you cannot speak the truth about the reality in front of you, if they can get you to lie about anything and everything, you cannot have a functioning (society) if they force you to not be able to speak the truth.” 

Civil rights attorney Candice Jackson attempted to explain the fervor many transgender advocates exhibit, calling it “a false religion posing and hiding under secular things like pseudo-science and pseudo-civil rights.” 

Jackson, a lawyer who worked in the first Trump administration and recently rejoined the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office, said advocates “are gravitating toward this supernatural, this bigger than myself sense that I’m not just carrying out a medical procedure, I’m saving someone’s soul. 

“So it feeds into that kind of, you know, almost God complex that maybe a lot of professionals have – and not just medical professionals, but any kind of authority figure, teachers, for example… ‘Why settle for just teaching a kid to read? I can save a kid’s soul.’” 

Jackson said people who take strong stands on this issue, including parents who support their kids transitioning, often face significant psychological and emotional barriers that make it hard to back away from it. 

Psychiatrist Dr. Miriam Grossman highlighted the importance of parents and professionals in speaking truth. 

“The responsibility of adults is to represent reality to young people,” she said. “Young people look to us to establish what is reality, what is real, what isn’t real, what’s possible in this world and what is impossible. And the reality is that male and female are permanently established at conception, and that is never going to change.  

“It is either male or female. There’s no spectrum. And to mislead young people to think otherwise is not doing them a favor. It is basically indoctrinating them with false ideas that will lead to permanent harm.” 

Gimelshteyn called the ballot initiatives “more than just a policy announcement – it’s a line in the sand. 

“These ballot measures represent a clear, courageous stand for children, families, fairness and future generations.” 

If the measures get the necessary 125,000 signatures each, their fate on the ballot remains uncertain.  

Voters in the liberal state approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion in 2024 and rejected a measure that would have granted the right to school choice.