Tag: gender

Christian camps sue Colorado for gender identity rules as state faces SCOTUS trifecta of losses

Coloradans with religious objections to same-sex marriage and gender ideology may have thought they could escape compelled affirmation of the state religion on these subjects as long as they weren’t creative professionals or didn’t send their kids to public school.

Then the Centennial State came for Christian summer camps.

Camp Id-Ra-Ha-Je Association – whose name refers to the hymn “I’d Rather Have Jesus” – sued the leaders of the Colorado Department of Early Childhood and its Division of Early Learning Licensing and Administration to block new childcare licensing rules that force it to treat children by gender identity rather than sex in its camps.

Regulators denied its request for a religious exemption from those rules – while having granted an “undue hardship” exemption since 2017 for the height of its “playground equipment” – even though the department grants a wide array of exemptions including to camps.

The association believes some licensees have received “categorical” exemptions and asked for the same under the “special school or class in religious instruction” exemption, but the department said that exemption isn’t applicable to it, according to the suit.

The result is the association must “surrender its religious character, beliefs, and exercise” by letting 6- to 17-year-olds use “restrooms, shower facilities, dressing areas, and sleeping facilities designated for the opposite sex” or lose its license of 30 years, the suit alleges.

It’s seeking a judicial declaration that enforcing gender-identity regulations against the association violates the First Amendment free exercise and establishment clauses and 14th Amendment equal protection clause, and preliminary and permanent injunctions against tying its childcare license to following those rules or abandoning its religious views.

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Federal judge strikes down workplace protections for transgender workers

A federal judge in Texas struck down guidance from a government agency specifying protections against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Thursday determined that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission exceeded its statutory authority when the agency issued guidance to employers against deliberately using the wrong pronouns for an employee, refusing them access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, and barring employees from wearing dress code-compliant clothing according to their gender identity because they may constitute forms of workplace harassment.

Kacsmaryk said the guidance is “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects employees and job applicants from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

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Colorado’s Democrat Governor Signs Law That Makes it Illegal to ‘Deadname,’ ‘Misgender’ Transgender People in ‘Certain Places’

Another day, another attack on the First Amendment.

Colorado’s Democrat Governor Jared Polis signed a new bill that makes it a crime to ‘deadname’ or ‘misgender’ transgender people in certain places.

“The bill requires to county clerks and recorders to issue name changes on marriage certificates when requested but leave no indication or mark that the certificate has been modified,” The Denver Post reported.

The Denver Post reported:

Colorado law now explicitly protects transgender people from being “deadnamed” or misgendered in certain places under legislation signed into law Friday by Gov. Jared Polis.

Passed as House Bill 1312, the new law is formally named for Kelly Loving, a transgender woman who died in the 2022 mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs. The law expands the state’s antidiscrimination laws, which apply to settings like workplaces and schools, to include provisions related to using a person’s chosen name and referring to them how they wish.

It also makes it easier for people to change their gender identity on birth certificates and driver’s licenses, and to change their names on marriage licenses.

“The Kelly Loving Act is a beacon of hope to trans people across the country,” Z Williams, whose law firm Bread and Roses supported HB-1312, said Friday. “Our organizing works. Hope is still alive. To be trans is to know how to struggle. We will not stop this work until every trans person is safe and free.”

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Gabriel Quadri Appeals to Inter-American Human Rights Commission in Landmark Free Speech Case Against Mexico

Gabriel Quadri’s legal struggle over the right to speak freely about sex and gender has reached the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights after he was punished in Mexico for expressing views that the state deemed politically unacceptable.

Represented by ADF International, the former congressman and presidential hopeful now seeks relief from a regional body, arguing that his conviction for “gender-based political violence” amounted to an assault on basic freedoms.

The controversy stems from a series of posts Quadri made on X in which he condemned the allocation of congressional seats reserved for women to individuals who identify as female but were born male. He also raised broader concerns about the erasure of women’s spaces in sports and politics. These statements triggered legal proceedings that ended in a unanimous ruling by Mexico’s Superior Electoral Tribunal in April 2022.

As part of the sentence, Quadri was ordered to remove the posts, undergo re-education courses, and repeatedly issue a court-written apology on his social media account over a two-week period. He was also placed on a registry branding him a “gender-based political violator,” a label that, according to his legal team, may have damaged his chances in the 2024 election, which he lost.

“I am committed to safeguarding every Mexican’s fundamental right to speak freely. My career has been dedicated to a prosperous and free Mexico for all, which demands that our country abide by its human rights obligations. I look forward to the day when all in Mexico can share their beliefs and opinions without fear of censorship or reprimand,” Quadri stated.

The case underscores growing concerns about how laws supposedly aimed at protecting marginalized groups are being used to silence individuals who dissent from prevailing gender orthodoxy.

“Gabriel Quadri was convicted in 2022 as a ‘political violator’ for stating the obvious fact that a man cannot be a woman. In 2024, he lost his re-election bid. Now, just a few years later, sanity is being restored across the world as the tide turns against gender ideology. Countless public officials at the highest levels are stating the same things that landed Quadri with a guilty verdict. It is egregiously unjust for Quadri to have suffered the ignominy of a conviction, and having his reputation damaged because of his registration as a ‘political violator’, which could have negatively impacted his re-election bid, for simply standing up for the truth,” said Julio Pohl, lead attorney for ADF International.

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Colorado Could Be The Parental Rights Canary In The Coal Mine

Some may look at the pending Colorado legislation destroying parental rights and wrongly see the last gasps of a dying woke regime.   

The dystopian state house bill, HB 25-1312 or better known as the “Kelly Loving Act,” allows the Colorado government to remove a child from her parents if parents refuse to go along with her gender dysphoria and self-styled new identity. It represents the most totalitarian legal destruction of parental rights in American history. 

The bill passed the Colorado House and Senate. To understand why this destructive legislation might become Colorado law, we need to look closer at the cultural understructure. 

The most politically powerful defenders of children are married, biological parents. In 1970, married households with kids under age 18 made up 40 percent of all American households. Today, that number stands at just 17.8 percent of all households. 

Colorado sits on the front edge of the demographic cliff with K-12 schools already starting to shutter. According to the US Census, married households with kids in the state are just 81 percent of the national average at 14.4 percent of all households.   

So, this evil legislation makes some political sense. The less married parents with kids in any electorate district, the more vulnerable parents and kids are to the onslaught of state power. 

And given current trends in marriage and fertility rates – our future politics may look a lot more like Colorado’s politics than anyone realizes. This legal threat to parental rights will spread. 

Here’s what we know both from the data and common sense.  

A man not married to the mother of his child is less present in the day-to-day life of his child. Nearly all unmarried dads are nonresident dads who see their child less than once a week within two years of becoming a nonresident dad. A large portion of these men see their child only monthly or even less. These children don’t just lack the vital day-to-day influence that only a loving, present father can provide, they lose a powerful advocate and protector – particularly in politics.   

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‘Death of women’s sports’: Male track runner shocks viewers with massive size advantage over female competitors

Yet another male athlete won a female high school athletic event, outpacing girls in a 200-meter race last weekend.

States continue to disregard President Trump’s executive order to keep men out of women’s sports, including Pennsylvania, the pivotal swing state that Trump won in 2024.

Over the weekend, the Suburban One League, an athletic conference in Southeastern Pennsylvania, hosted the SOL American Conference Championships in Horsham. During the Liberty Girls’ 200-meter race, viewers quickly noticed that one of the runners had distinct physical qualities.

“His shoulder width is twice the size of the girls,” one viewer wrote.

“He’s got big quads,” reporter Beth Bourne wrote alongside a photo of the athlete.

A video of the event, taken from near the finish line, showed high school male Sean “Luce” Allen take the victory in the girls’ 200-meter race, winning by just over one-tenth of a second.

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Georgia governor signs law banning funding for gender transitions in prison

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation banning the use of taxpayer funds for gender “transition” procedures for prison inmates, declaring it a “common-sense step.”

Senate Bill 185 states that “no state funds or resources shall be used” for “(s)ex reassignment surgeries or any other surgical procedures that are performed for the purpose of altering primary or secondary sexual characteristics; (h)ormone replacement therapies; and (c)osmetic procedures or prosthetics intended to alter the appearance of primary or secondary sexual characteristics.”

Exceptions would be made for “medical conditions where such treatments are considered medically necessary” unrelated to gender dysphoria or sex reassignment; rare cases of “medically verifiable disorder of sex development, including individuals born with ambiguous genitalia or chromosomal abnormalities resulting in ambiguity regarding the individual’s biological sex”; “partial androgen insensitivity syndrome”; or weaning off hormone replacement therapies that were underway before incarceration.

“Taxpayer dollars should not be used for procedures like this, and this legislation codifies that common-sense step,” Kemp declared just before signing the bill at a public event, WMAZ reported.

“A budget is a reflection of our priorities, and by voting red, we are signaling that our priorities lean more toward paying for sex reassignment surgeries than budget dollars for teachers, pre-K students and for law enforcement, which is why in my mind SB 185 is a common-sense piece of legislation for our constituents,” Republican state Rep. Scott Hilton said last month in the floor debate over the bill, WABE added.

In recent years, there has been growing concern around the world over placing men who claim to be women in female prison populations that has proved to be a means of both securing lighter treatment during incarceration and gaining easy access to women to prey upon. Transgender status also has the potential to be exploited to avoid incarceration entirely in some cases, as seen in Wales when a man who identified as a woman received a suspended sentence keeping him out of prison despite physically assaulting two partners within days of each other on the grounds that he would be “vulnerable” behind bars.

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Department of Defense Orders Halt to Gender Transition Medicine, Procedures

The U.S. Department of Defense said in a new memorandum that it is halting medical treatments and procedures for troops who identify as transgender and other personnel with gender dysphoria (GD).

“Within the direct care component, meaning at military medical treatment facilities … Service members and all other covered beneficiaries 19 years of age or older may only receive mental health care and counseling for GD,” Dr. Stephen L. Ferrara, acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said in the memo, which is dated May 9.

“Apart from consults for the diagnosis of GD and provision of mental health care and counseling … staff will refer all other care (e.g., cross-sex hormone therapy) for GD to the private sector.”

The Pentagon did not return a request for comment by publication time.

Gender dysphoria refers to when a person believes they’re a gender that’s different from their sex.

President Donald Trump, after taking office in January, said in an order that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”

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Affirm Your Kid’s Chosen Gender Or Lose Custody? Colorado’s Chilling New Bill

The Colorado state legislature is considering a bill that would radically chill parents’ speech. Dubbed the “Kelly Loving Act,” the bill, if signed into law, would empower judges to consider “deadnaming” and “misgendering” your child to be types of “coercive control” when they’re making custody decisions. In simple terms: if your child gender transitions and you don’t affirm their new gender identity, then a judge could consider your non-affirmation to be a form of abuse and use it as justification to deny you custody of your child.

This is a deeply chilling bill. The bill’s sponsors frame it as a way to show support for transgender people, but this bill goes way too far in stripping away parents’ rights.

Being a good and loving parent means telling your child “no.” Every parent has had these conversations.

“No, you can’t have M&Ms for dinner; eat your broccoli.”

“No, you can’t stay up until midnight. Your bedtime is ten.”

“No, you can’t hang out with Chad who’s always high; find some friends who will have a better influence on you.”

But when it comes to gender transitioning, saying “no” could be dangerous. If your son decides to socially transition and begins calling himself a girl, and you don’t unconditionally affirm that decision, then you could risk losing him if you’re ever in a child custody battle.

Some advocates of gender transitioning say that socially transitioning is harmless. After all, what does it matter if your son starts to use female pronouns and wear dresses? The problem is that socially transitioning puts many children on a conveyor belt to medically transitioning. According to a 2022 study on the topic, a stunning 97.5 percent of young people who socially transitioned continued to identify as either trans or nonbinary several years later. Nearly 60 percent went on to medically transition via either puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.

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When the Truth Is Uncomfortable – and We Want to Look Away

Both the UK grooming scandals and the medicalisation of ROGD teens highlight how the visceral reality of body horror drives us to turn away from deeply unsettling truths.

It’s striking how two seemingly unrelated issues can sometimes reveal the same deep-rooted problems in society. On the one hand there are the UK grooming gang scandals – horrifying crimes, ignored for decades, involving networks of Pakistani Muslim men who targeted vulnerable teenage girls. On the other, there’s the sudden explosion of teenagers, particularly girls, identifying as trans – many of whom are suffering irreversible harm as a consequence of inappropriate medical transition. At first glance you may not think these two crises have much in common, but scratch the surface and a disturbing pattern emerges.

In both cases, the adults in charge looked the other way. Institutions minimised. Social workers made the wrong calls. Mental health professionals rarely helped – and often caused harm. Journalists stayed silent. Officials deflected. Very few people in positions of authority had the courage to confront the shocking reality, and those who did were labelled as bigots.

Meanwhile parents’ pleas were ignored and dismissed as either “Islamophobic” or “transphobic” depending on the context. And because the parents found no societal support when they needed it, their children became out of control and their lives were ruined.

At a conference in the US earlier this year, I found myself facing blank stares when I mentioned the parallels between girls caught up in the grooming gang scandal and teenagers swept up in the world of rapid-onset gender dysphoria. One delegate pushed back, insisting that victims never feel glad to be targeted while plenty of ROGD kids say they are happy with their medical transition. But sadly, that’s not true. Many of the targets of grooming gangs believed their abusers were their boyfriends. Just like many ROGD teens, they felt flattered by the attention and even encouraged their friends to join in what they saw as fun. The gifts, the glamour, the sense of being wanted – it all had a powerful pull. Quite a number went as far as converting to Islam and marrying their abusers.

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