When your ballot arrives in the mail in a few weeks, it will be the size of a phonebook. That’s due to the whopping 14 ballot initiatives which qualified for the November election, tying 2008 as the high water mark for Colorado’s initiative system. As I’ve spent the last several weeks rambling about, 8 of those 14 initiatives are sponsored by billionaire-backed conservative organization Advance Colorado, and every single one of those eight deserve a no vote.
The eight Advance-backed measures are not the only initiatives on the November ballot which deserve your no vote, though. Three others – a slate of conspiratorial and bigoted measures backed by right-wing activist group Protect Kids Colorado – also warrant resounding rejection. In order to give you the most concise explanation of why each of the PKC initiatives should be discarded with as much disdain as possible, I turned to someone who knows more about the initiatives and the group behind them than anybody else I know: CTR’s own Jamie O’Rourke.
This fall is the first time many Coloradans will hear about Protect Kids Colorado, thanks to their slate of ballot initiatives, but Jamie has been covering the group for years. Jamie covered the group’s attempt and failure to make it this far in the ballot process in 2024, founder Erin Lee’s ties to both local and national networks of Christian nationalists, the group’s long journey to this year’s ballot, and much more.
The three PKC-sponsored initiatives which will appear on your ballot next month each deal with different topics, but are united by the same themes animating the group behind them: homophobia, conspiracism, and an utter disregard for the children they claim to be protecting.
Proposition 133 – Penalties for Human Trafficking a Minor
Proposition 133 would institute mandatory life sentences for anyone convicted of trafficking a child. Rather than being based on best practices for the support and healing of children who have been victims of a traumatic crime, Prop 133 has been called a “Trojan horse” for a broader political agenda.
Sex trafficking is real, and it is horrible. In 2023, Colorado reported 84 cases, making it the state with the 10th most recorded cases that year – a fact not unrelated to our state’s location at the crossroads of two major interstates. Around the country and here in Colorado, many organizations are dedicated to combatting sex trafficking, and providing care and support for victims.
While Protect Kids Colorado claims to be interested in doing the same thing, Proposition 133 contains none of the best practices embraced by the established organizations in the space, which might explain why the initiative has not been endorsed by any legitimate anti-trafficking orgs. According to a report from Colorado Newsline earlier this year, the National Survivor Network is actively opposing the measure.
Unlike the other two initiatives on this list, Jamie pointed out that Prop 133 doesn’t specifically target trans people — “but I think it’s important to note its place in the milieu of anti-trans politics. LGBTQ people have long been smeared as dangerous to children. PKC’s Erin Lee has previously claimed that LGBTQ advocacy orgs are part of a QAnon-esque conspiracy to lure children into sex trafficking. While promoting the PKC initiatives last year, Jim Burgen of Flatirons Community Church explicitly called the three out as part of the same spiritual battle.”
Verdict: Prop 133 is a Trojan Horse for a tough-on-crime agenda with no measures to help the actual children it claims to care about. If it was a meaningful measure to curb human trafficking, surely even one anti-trafficking org would have endorsed it, right? Vote no.
Proposition 134 – Male and Female Participation in School Sports
Sex trafficking is real, and it is horrible. In 2023, Colorado reported 84 cases, making it the state with the 10th most recorded cases that year – a fact not unrelated to our state’s location at the crossroads of two major interstates. Around the country and here in Colorado, many organizations are dedicated to combatting sex trafficking, and providing care and support for victims.
While Protect Kids Colorado claims to be interested in doing the same thing, Proposition 133 contains none of the best practices embraced by the established organizations in the space, which might explain why the initiative has not been endorsed by any legitimate anti-trafficking orgs. According to a report from Colorado Newsline earlier this year, the National Survivor Network is actively opposing the measure.
Unlike the other two initiatives on this list, Jamie pointed out that Prop 133 doesn’t specifically target trans people — “but I think it’s important to note its place in the milieu of anti-trans politics. LGBTQ people have long been smeared as dangerous to children. PKC’s Erin Lee has previously claimed that LGBTQ advocacy orgs are part of a QAnon-esque conspiracy to lure children into sex trafficking. While promoting the PKC initiatives last year, Jim Burgen of Flatirons Community Church explicitly called the three out as part of the same spiritual battle.”
Verdict: Prop 133 is a Trojan Horse for a tough-on-crime agenda with no measures to help the actual children it claims to care about. If it was a meaningful measure to curb human trafficking, surely even one anti-trafficking org would have endorsed it, right? Vote no.
Proposition 134 – Male and Female Participation in School Sports
Proposition 134 would prohibit transgender youth of any age from participating in any K-12 or collegiate sports – quite literally a measure to single out specific children for exclusion. Thanks in no small part to heavy spending by deep-pocketed political interests and the deployment of an enormous astroturf campaign, and despite transgender individuals making up about 1% of the population, there has been a nationwide debate in recent years about exactly this topic. Proposition 134 is PKC’s way of getting in on the action.
In short
Amid the feverishly well-funded push to ban transgender student athletes from competition nationwide, certain facts have become muddy in the public mind. There now exists in some corners an idea that children assigned male at birth are going through a lengthy and arduous transition process simply to excel at athletics against competitors assigned female at birth. That is, of course, ridiculous – as are a number of other myths surrounding the topic.
Worse than ridiculous, though, are the consequences the measure might have if passed. How exactly does one ensure that the trans kids are weeded out? Proponents tend to dismiss the claim that the law might require children around the state to submit to mandatory genital inspections before being allowed to play sports, but that exact consequence has been flagged as a serious possible outcome in a very similar initiative in Washington State this year.
“The mechanism for confirming a student’s sex assigned at birth is not specified whatsoever by the bill,” Jamie told me. “Similar bills in other states, while bad, at least give clarity that something like a birth certificate or other document will suffice. Prop. 134 only defines ‘male’ and ‘female’ by reproductive organs, which is where you get the concern from opponents of this bill that it will potentially subject children to invasive inspections.”
Verdict: Not only is it based on a willful misunderstanding of well-established facts, Prop 134 is also a recipe for subjecting children around the state to invasive, traumatic exams, all in service of bullying 1% of them. Vote no.
Proposition 135 – Prohibit Certain Surgeries on Minors
Proposition 135 aims to restrict gender-affirming medical care for minors by prohibiting “any surgery to alter sex characteristics.” The number of such surgeries performed on minors nationwide is vanishingly small, and zero such surgeries are performed on anyone 12 or younger. These claims have been fact-checked relentlessly over the last few years, but activists like those at Protect Kids Colorado have declined to accept the checked facts.
Beyond being an attempt to “solve” a “problem” which – even if either of those descriptors were accurate – simply does not exist, opponents have argued that the bill could have serious consequences if passed. By barring “any surgery to alter sex characteristics,” there is a risk that it may become illegal to perform critical procedures, like a mastectomy on a young woman with breast cancer, for instance. It would also likely ban chest reduction surgeries for cisgender boys, who comprise the vast majority of minor patients whose doctors prescribe gender-affirming surgery.
“While the bill does contain an attempted carve-out saying that it only applies to treatment ‘in response to a minor’s perception of sex or gender,’ this is still fairly vague as to what it would entail legally,” Jamie told me. “What we’ve seen in states that have restricted abortion is that physicians are less willing to provide care for miscarriages, for example, out of fear of getting into legal trouble. Physicians are going to be nervous about operating in legally murky areas.”
Verdict: A cohort of people who have ignored every possible fact check of every possible claim surrounding gender-affirming surgery for minors now want to turn their ignorance into law. Vote no.
Over the last several weeks, I have covered 11 of the 14 initiatives which will bulk-up your November ballot, and I have recommended that you vote no on all of them. Next week, I will look at the only three measures out of the whole bunch which I believe warrant a yes vote – or at least neutrality – and what a nice change of pace that will be.
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