To most people, the word ‘plague’ conjures images of widespread infectious disease and death. It’s also the word that former GOP lawmaker Kevin Lundberg used to describe the transgender rights movement in Colorado, as his organization Protect Kids Colorado seeks enough petition signatures to put anti-trans initiatives on the 2026 ballot.
“This battle is real, and that is why Protect Kids Colorado is in the final weeks of a significant fight to stop the transgender plague in Colorado,” Lundberg wrote in his newsletter, “The Lundberg Report,” last month.
Lundberg, who did not respond to a request for comment, also leads the Republican Study Committee of Colorado (an ultra-conservative group of current and former state lawmakers) and remains active in the state party. His involvement in far-right politics goes back years, even before the onset of the MAGA movement.
Lundberg was one of Protect Kids Colorado’s founding members when it launched in 2024. From the start, the group’s mission has been to attack transgender people’s rights through the ballot initiative process – one of the only ways to pass conservative policy in a state where Democrats control all branches of government. The campaign has become a crusade for right-wing religious groups who use their faith to justify pushing trans people out of public life.
Their efforts in 2024 were delayed by legal challenges, and ultimately failed to collect enough signatures before the deadline to qualify for the ballot. In January, Protect Kids Colorado informed the Secretary of State it had attained 75% of the 124,238 signatures needed.
“Human beings are not a ‘plague.’ One Colorado rejects the dehumanization of the transgender community and all marginalized people,” wrote One Colorado spokesperson Cal Solverson in an email to the Colorado Times Recorder. “Trans folks are our neighbors, friends, and family, living with resilience, love, and joy that outshines the misinformation and hatred being used against them. In Colorado, we fundamentally value freedom, and freedom only truly exists when it applies to everyone.”
Protect Kids Colorado is attempting to get three initiatives on the ballot. #109 would effectively ban students who are trans from playing sports, and #110 would ban certain gender-affirming care procedures from being performed on anyone under 18.
Another initiative, #108, aims to increase the penalty for child sex trafficking to life imprisonment. While it has nothing to do with trans people, a Colorado megachurch pastor implied, while promoting the three initiatives, that social acceptance of LGBTQ people is linked to sex trafficking – without providing evidence. Protect Kids Colorado Executive Director Erin Lee has also previously claimed, again without evidence, that LGBTQ advocacy groups like The Trevor Project are engaged in trafficking children.
This comes as anti-LGBTQ political figures across the country are bolstered by a sympathetic federal government. Last year, the Trump administration attempted to restrict the lives of trans people through a mix of executive orders and federal rule changes, with a particular focus on youth healthcare. In response, many hospitals, including some in Colorado, have stopped or temporarily paused offering gender-affirming care. Additionally, Republican state lawmakers across the country continue offering a deluge of anti-trans bills, with hundreds being introduced nationwide every year.
Conservative political candidates across the country have increasingly singled out Democratic support for transgender rights as a wedge issue. But in some prominent cases last year, this seemed to backfire, with Democratic candidates like Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia beating Republicans by wide margins despite their opponents spending millions of dollars on anti-trans attack ads.
The initiatives are now being endorsed by multiple prominent Colorado Republican political candidates. U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO), running for reelection in one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country, posted a video to X (formerly Twitter) on Jan. 6 saying he had signed the initiatives, and encouraging supporters to do the same. Conservative gubernatorial candidates such as Republican Scott Bottoms have supported the initiatives, and Republican-turned-independent Greg Lopez has worked with Protect Kids Colorado since its 2024 launch.
Supporters’ extreme rhetoric
Lundberg’s ‘plague’ comparison, while extreme, is not far removed from what he and other Protect Kids Colorado members have said previously. Other anti-trans activists have frequently used the phrase “social contagion” to claim that children identify as transgender not out of any sincere feeling, but because their peers have influenced them to do so.
The “social contagion” myth is a subset of the controversial theory of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD). A 2021 letter signed by the American Psychological Association and 61 other medical organizations called for the term to be discontinued, noting that the theory has not been subject to peer review and is not supported by clinical evidence.
Lundberg is not the only supporter of the initiatives to make extreme statements in recent weeks. Fellow Protect Kids Colorado leader Jennifer Sey, who owns an anti-trans clothing line called XX-XY Athletics, likened social acceptance of trans people to another time-tested conservative boogeyman: communism.
“70, 80% of the people most of the time across eras and geographies will do what they’re being told and will go with the herd while thinking they’re, you know, standing apart from the crowd,” Sey said in an interview with the Daily Wire’s The Isabel Brown Show. “And there are ideologies across the eras that say the state and this ideology is more important than your family. I mean, that’s what communism advocates for. They want that tie to the state to be greater than the tie to your own family. People turn their own families in.”
Richard Harris, Executive Director of Truth & Liberty, a Christian-right group created by Woodland Park-based televangelist Andrew Wommack, pushed even harder on anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in a recent podcast episode promoting the ballot initiatives. According to Harris, Truth & Liberty field representatives are working to get the petitions over the signature threshold.
He referenced a passage from the biblical story of Sodom & Gomorrah, in which a mob of residents of those cities threaten to sexually abuse visitors at the home of Lot – before directly likening this story to his perception of the LGBTQ community today.
“My judgment is that well over 90% of people that engage in this kind of behavior repeatedly have trauma, abuse, and severe rejection or neglect in their background,” Harris said. “… This same trauma fuels an anger and a lust inside of them that frankly cannot be satisfied through carnal means.”
“Just consider these stories that I read to you … You know, Lot came out and was standing in their way, right? He was standing their way, and they would have abused him the same if he had continued to oppose him,” Harris continued. “You know, this root of anger and rage is actually manifesting amongst the LGBT community, so-called, in our country today. You can see the same thing happening.”
Harris also referenced an infamous passage of Leviticus, which says that homosexuals should be put to death. “Chapter 20, verse 13 of Leviticus, if a man also lie with man kind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination, they shall surely be put to death, their blood is to be upon them,” Harris said, before quickly clarifying, “I’m not of course advocating that we go out and kill homosexuals today, but I’m sounding an alarm.”
Harris did not respond to a request for further comment; this story will be updated with any response received.
Broader implications
The group’s signature-gathering effort launched in September, according to the state Title Board, which gives proponents until the middle of February to submit the required signatures: Feb. 16 for one measure and Feb. 20 for the other two. Even if the threshold is achieved, the Secretary of State’s office often determines some signatures to be invalid.
While Protect Kids Colorado has been disadvantaged by using volunteer gatherers instead of paid canvassers, it has been boosted by influential religious leaders, including the Catholic Archdiocese and Flatirons Community Church, a megachurch with five locations across the state. According to Lundberg’s newsletter, “dozens” more churches will help to gather signatures in the final weeks.
Initiative #109 has taken on national implications this year, as extremist anti-LGBTQ legal group Alliance Defending Freedom argues in favor of the constitutionality of trans sports bans to the majority-conservative U.S. Supreme Court in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ. Protect Kids Colorado’s leaders are among those watching the results eagerly.
“And when that happens, when the decision comes out from today’s arguments, that means that those of us in the remaining 23 states who are working to pass these laws, they cannot be overturned,” Lee said in an interview on Ryan Schuiling Live, a conservative talk show on KHOW Radio. “And so the ballot measure that we’re running, we would be the first blue state to pass this kind of a law.”
Anti-trans activists have claimed that policies like #109 don’t constitute a de facto ban, as trans students could join co-ed leagues. Solverson from One Colorado contradicted this.
“Sports are an essential part of developing character, teamwork, and physical and emotional health. Requiring trans youth to join separate or co-ed leagues is exclusionary, not practical, and creates unnecessary financial barriers for trans youth and their families. Every child deserves equal access to the benefits provided by team sports,” wrote Solverson.
Members of Protect Kids Colorado have made it clear that, if their initiatives are successful, their ultimate plan is to eliminate all legal rights for trans youth to exist openly.
“You know, in a perfect world, I would have loved to outlaw social and chemical transition as well. These puberty blockers are not reversible. But as a first step, I like to say we’re taking small bites out of the donkey. It’s what the Democrats do. We are just tackling the surgery issue,” Lee said in a December interview with KNUS Radio’s The Jeff & Bill Show.
The actual science behind puberty-blocking medication is far more complicated than what Lee suggests. These medications are typically prescribed only until a patient gets to an age where they can decide whether they want to begin hormone replacement therapy, and not throughout the entirety of puberty. The main side effect is decreased bone density, which can be alleviated through nutrition and exercise. It’s also worth noting that puberty blockers have, for many years, been prescribed to cisgender children experiencing early puberty.
In a Jan. 23 fundraising email, One Colorado responded to the initiatives and said it was making preparations to fight them if they reach the ballot.
“If these measures qualify, families, schools, and communities across Colorado will be impacted, and we are already organizing, training advocates, preparing legal strategy, and building the voter education campaigns needed to win,” it read.
