Welcome to For The Record, the Colorado Times Recorder’s new series where you can hear public figures in their own words. We’ll give you the clip and the context, so you can listen for yourself.
Speaking to two Colorado Republican activists last month, state Rep. Scott Bottoms (R-Colorado Springs) said that he “really believes” that Colorado’s legislative Democrats will introduce a bill to lower Colorado’s age of consent to 12 years old during next year’s legislative session. He offered no evidence to support the assertion.
Since taking office in 2023, Bottoms, who is also a pastor at the Church at Briargate in Colorado Springs, has become notorious for making frequent inflammatory statements, including on abortion and LGBTQ people.
His rhetoric is often aimed across the aisle at his Democratic colleagues, who he has accused of promoting pedophilia, or being pedophiles themselves, on more than one occasion. In 2022, before his election, Bottoms said that the lawmakers responsible for a sex education bill are “pedophiles and they should be in jail for that.”
Earlier, in 2020, Bottoms directly promoted conspiracy theories that the Democratic National Convention was involved in sex trafficking.
Other Republican elected officials have joined him: earlier this year, state Rep. Ken DeGraaf (R-Colorado Springs) directly claimed some members of the Democratic legislative caucus are “pedophilic” on the basis that they took offense to the pejorative word “groomer.”
“It is too revealing to [Democrats] when we say they are in favor of pedophilic bills. And they are,” Bottoms said during an April 24 interview on The Chuck & Julie Show. “We can prove – this is not my summation, this is facts on paper, recorded votes – that they prefer predators over law abiding citizens.”
Bottoms escalated his inflammatory rhetoric towards Colorado Democrats, insisting that, in next year’s legislative session, they will attempt to lower Colorado’s age of consent to 12.
“It’s not always easy. Believe it or not, the way you’re saying it is correct, to get up day after day after day and to fight this stupidity. Every day they’re throwing a bill at us. And I said this, I think I said it on, on, your show one time that I really believe that the next thing they’re going to do next year is, lower the age of sexual consent to 12. This is where they’re headed.”
