Erin Lee's political crusade has largely targeted transgender youth, but when pressed, she said that students are indoctrinated or pressured into assuming other identities, too. She says that the victims of this pressure are "straight white kids," who only claim an LGBTQ identity to be "cool."
Last week, a set of anti-trans initiatives was approved for Colorado’s 2026 ballot. The Colorado Times Recorder has been tracking these initiatives, and the anti-LGBTQ activist group Protect Kids Colorado that has pushed them with help from conservative politicians and religious ministries, for over two years. Here’s all the news you might have missed.
An anti-LGBTQ organization pushing to get initiatives on the 2026 ballot has previously gathered signatures exclusively through volunteers. But with just days left to qualify, the group has now hired a professional firm.
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.
A lawsuit filed against a Fort Collins, CO school district over its policy to not notify parents about students’ transgender identities has been dismissed three times. Now, after its dismissal in April by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, the plaintiffs are officially appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the case now awaits the approval of the nation’s highest court.
Last Saturday, a rally by Gays Against Groomers (GaG), a group that believes any form of gender-affirming healthcare is child abuse or ‘grooming’, was met with counterprotests. GaG, which was founded by a pro-Trump, conservative media specialist with ties to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, has held similar events, which it calls the “Stop the War On Children” rally, in Colorado before and across the country.
This morning, activists from Protect Kids Colorado and partnered organizations announced that their two ballot initiatives, both targeting the rights of transgender youths in Colorado, had failed to collect enough signatures to be eligible for the 2024 ballot.
While the deadline to submit signatures is on Monday, Protect Kids Colorado set an internal deadline of Wednesday, July 31st.
Ballot initiatives. Referenda. Plebiscites. Whatever you want to call them, they play a major role in Colorado’s political life. We vote on tax increases, pet projects, citizens’ initiatives, legislatively referred initiatives, and anything else under the sun for which a determined enough cadre of organizers can collect a sufficient amount of signatures to place on our ballots. Colorado is not unique in this regard – 26 states have ballot initiative processes – but we are exceptional: between 1912, when the first initiative appeared on a Colorado ballot, and 2023, Colorado has voted on 266 initiatives, the third most of any state, behind Oregon and California.
The myth has served to advance the broader conservative culture war against LGBTQ inclusion in schools, with proponents generally positioning furries as the next stop on the slippery slope of tolerance for diverse identities.
