Latest / Hate State / Trans Lives on the Ballot

Transcript

Trans Lives on the Ballot · Hate State

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I realized I was trans, I believe, this summer going into fifth grade.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_05: This is Kay, reflecting on a moment that changed the course of his life.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: One of my aunts or something had sent me a pair of shorts as a birthday gift, but they were more like the the boys' cut length of shorts, and I put them on and I looked in the mirror and I was like, oh.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I could be a boy.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Before that, I just hadn't really thought about gender, but then this prompted me to think about gender, and I was like, oh, wait, but if I had a choice, I would want to be a guy.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Kay is 17 now.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: He loves the outdoors and he's interested in the sciences.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: But also loves theater.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, sadly, this year, because of other classes that take priority, I can't do my school's uh play.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: But last year um I was Professor Plum in Clue, and then the year before that, I was Soda Pop in The Outsiders.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: After realizing he was trans just before fifth grade, it took him another couple of years to come out to his parents.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: We had a family friend who identified as trans at the time, um, who was staying in town with us.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'd been thinking about coming out for a while, but I just didn't have the confidence to.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but having somebody else there who is um also trans, you know, gave me more confidence.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I go to my mom in like her her office, like sewing room area, um, and I'm like, hey, uh, you know, I have something to tell you.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to be a boy.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: I would prefer if you call me by he and pronouns.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And she kind of just stared at me and she was like, Oh, okay.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: She just told me that she was surprised, and um ended up telling my dad.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then after my the family friend had left, we all had dinner together.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_05: On that day, Kay was wearing an expander.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_05: It's kind of like wearing braces, but there was this big piece of metal clinging to the roof of his mouth and pushing up behind his front teeth.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_05: One of the first things he remembers about this pivotal conversation with his parents was how the expander made it harder to talk and to eat, and it gave him a lisp.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I can't really eat, can't really speak, and we're trying to have a serious conversation over dinner.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: My dad basically uh tells me I was just empathizing.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was a very empathetic person, and I was empathizing with trans people too much.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_05: Kay went upstairs and cried in his room.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_05: He felt like his dad had swept aside what was supposed to be this watershed moment in his life with an easy explanation.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_05: A few days later, his dad took him out and they talked about it a little more.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_05: Kay says his dad just reiterated that Kay was very empathetic.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: He also said, No, it's kind of a trend now for with, you know, young girls your age.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then they, you know, come around and then they regret it, and you know.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Kids like Kay are the focus of a heated national debate, but they almost never get to have a say in that debate themselves.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Just like gays were vilified in the 90s in order to justify passing amendment two, trans people, specifically trans kids, are being smeared by the latest iteration of the conservative political machine.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Anne-Marie Awad.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Alexander McMahon, and this is Hate State, a series about the two Colorados that have been battling it out over LGBTQ rights for almost half a century, and how our state is now a testing ground for the country's anti-trans legislation.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_05: If you have not listened to the first two episodes of this series, I highly recommend that you hit pause on this one and start with episode one.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_05: Over the last two installments, we traced Colorado's journey to becoming the hate state, and how the backlash to Amendment 2 totally swung the pendulum of gay rights in the other direction.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_05: Then Colorado became a sort of haven for LGBTQ Americans.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_05: But as we heard in the last episode, that reputation as a safe haven is exactly what keeps Colorado in the crosshairs.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_05: Deep-pocketed conservative organizations still want to roll back protections for queer people here.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_05: And on this episode, we're going to talk about the latest iteration of this decades-long fight, trans rights.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, wait, and before we get into how the fight is playing out in Colorado, I just want to take a quick look at what the wider cultural landscape is like for trans people.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's a good idea.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so since the 2010s, we've seen a lot more trans people in the public eye.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Just looking at TV and film, there was, of course, Laverne Cox with her breakout role in Orange is the New Black.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_05: So good.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: Hunter Schaefer famously starred in the HBO series Euphoria.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_05: My god, yes, the Jules episode.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: And just a few weeks before this recording, Elliot Page posed topless on the cover of New York magazine after returning to the silver screen in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_05: This list sounds like we're doing pretty good on trans representation.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_05: And there's some solidarity in pop culture.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_05: My personal favorite is Pedro Pascal wearing his Protect the Dolls shirt on red carpets in support of his sister, Lux.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, why is he so cool?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_05: You'd think we're becoming more supportive of trans people as a nation, but the solidarity kind of stops there.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_05: In the same time span, we've seen a nationwide crackdown on trans rights through bathroom bills and scathing discourse.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_05: Would you want your daughter sharing a bathroom with a biological man?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Mary Peltola co-sponsored.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: In 2024, the Biden administration said we must allow men to play women's sports.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: But despite all this, we've still had more openly trans people serving in government than ever before, including Dr.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Rachel Levine, who is part of Joe Biden's cabinet.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_05: And looking at Colorado, the state has mostly held on to its progressive protections and evaded the anti-trans measures popping up across the country.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_05: But now the pendulum swings once more.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, there are two measures specifically targeting the rights of trans kids on Colorado's 2026 midterm ballot.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: One of them would pass the Protect Women and Girls Sports Act.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: It includes a strict definition of who is a man and who is a woman, which would then limit who gets to participate in school sports.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: But it does not explain how school administrators or coaches are supposed to verify who is male and who is female.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_05: The second measure is the Protect Children from Irreversible Sex Change Surgery Act, which is a mouthful.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_05: It would prohibit any healthcare professional from performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors, even though hospitals in Colorado say kids are not receiving trans affirming surgeries, anyways.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_05: The language does not specify which procedures would be banned, but it does include exceptions for male circumcision and surgeries to treat developmental disorders.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: These two measures landed on the ballot through the efforts of a new conservative organization, Protect Kids Colorado, which I think sounds a little reminiscent of Colorado for Family Values.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: You're not wrong.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: It describes itself as a grassroots coalition of parents and community leaders.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Kevin Lundberg, a former Republican state lawmaker who sits on the board of directors, has also not been coy with his opinions on trans people.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: In his newsletter earlier this year, Lundberg characterized these ballot measures as a quote, significant fight to stop the transgender plague in Colorado.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Transgender people right now are the scapegoats.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Remember Phil Nash, the gay activist who helped found Denver's first center for the gay and lesbian community?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: To him, this feels like deja vu.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a new phenomenon in world history.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: You think you've made progress, and sometimes you realize that uh that it isn't forward progress, it's just kind of things are circular.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_05: Phil is not wrong.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_05: We've been here before.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_05: Remember we told you how in the 90s Colorado for Family Values accused gay people of wanting special rights?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_05: And national figures were calling gay people a moral abomination.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_05: Today, if you listen to conservatives, the transgender plague is supposedly the number one threat to children.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_05: Hence the name Protect Kids Colorado.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Different slogans, same playbook.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: Just like the last episode, we heard about the ADF going around the country shopping for plaintiffs to lead anti-gay lawsuits.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_05: Protect kids groups across the country are heading up similar anti-trans ballot measures in the 2026 midterms.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_05: There's one in Arizona and Nebraska and Washington and Missouri.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_05: The move now is to introduce ballot initiatives to limit trans kids' access to school sports and gender-affirming care.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Kay, our theater-loving trans teen, turns 18 next year, so the Colorado ballot measures won't impact him directly.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: But as that milestone approaches, Kay says gender-affirming care feels like an important step into adulthood.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds very dramatic, but like it is kind of life or death that um I would like to get rolling on gender-affirming care, like as soon as I'm 18.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: That I can't oh my dad wants me to wait till 25.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, so um he can't make you wait until you're 25.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_05: I guess I don't know what the conversations go.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: To wait till I'm 25, and I've I've said that, like, I don't without gender-affirming care, I will not make it to 25.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_08: When we ban health care for people, there's a slippery slope and we cannot go down that road.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_05: Representative Brianna Tatone, who we met last episode, is getting ready to conclude her time in the state legislature.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_05: She's not on the ballot this year, but her identity is.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_05: She says both of the measures on this year's ballot could affect everyone, not just trans kids and their families.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_08: We have established that gender-affirming care is reproductive health care, which is included in abortion care.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_08: So that might be another motivation of the uh the people running this initiative.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's worth noting that in Missouri, the Protect Kids proposition limiting gender-affirming care does seek to limit access to abortion too.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And what Representative Titone is referring to here about having determined that gender-affirming care is reproductive care, that's in reference to a 2023 Colorado bill that enshrined protections for gender-affirming care and abortion into law.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_05: Because remember, Colorado is this progressive haven, right?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's why a lot of people move here.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_05: And we've heard from multiple people anecdotally in the story that a lot of queer families have relocated here.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_05: We don't have the exact number, but we do know from the UCLA Williams Institute that nearly half of the trans adults that they surveyed have either relocated to a more affirming state or want to.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_05: And we know that Colorado has fought to be one of those affirming states.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, families are pissed.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I mean, many of these families from Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, they came here seeking solace and sanctuary because of the amazing work we've done.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: This is Nadine Bridges, executive director of One Colorado, which is leading the effort against the Protect Kids propositions.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: She's picked up the mantle and is doing the work that Phil Nash and Mary Celeste did in the 90s to fight Amendment 2.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_04: We have some of the most incredible, strong, and the most protections in any of the state and the nation when it comes to LGBTQ rights and in particular gender affirming care.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um so it's almost heartbreaking to them right now that this is going on and that it's creating an unstable foundation for them.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, many of these folks are just trying to live their lives day to day.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_04: I'll be 50 in January.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um maybe growing up, I didn't know anything about gender expression outside of being a tomboy.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_04: Many of these kids don't know anything else but living their identities.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: And then you're asking them what?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_04: To like be something that they've never been.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_05: And that's the thing about this latest swing of the pendulum of LGBTQ rights.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_05: On top of the coordinated effort to eliminate trans people from public life and the toll that takes to be a target of that, the trans experience is widely misunderstood.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_05: Which is why, Xandra, I want to step away from the ballot initiatives for a moment and hear from Kay firsthand.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's do that.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Let's spend some time with Kay.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Ever since I was I realized I was trans, I wanted to go by a different name.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but because one of the things that my dad said to me is that he doesn't want me to be one of those kids who, you know, changes their name every like few months or something.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought about what name I wanted to go by really, really hard.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I had some of my friends start to call me Kay um at the end of eighth grade, and I was like, okay, yeah, this feels good.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I want.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so just make it more official, I want everybody to see me as Kay in high school.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_05: He came across the name in The Snow Queen, a story written by Hans Christian Andersen.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_05: It's the story that inspired Frozen.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_05: It just felt right to Kay to start his high school career with a new name.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_05: And his teachers, classmates, and administrators, they didn't blink an eye.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_05: Kay says his high school is very inclusive, but it would take another couple of years before his parents would even use that name for him at home.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or I'll be at like some other school activity or something, and it's coming to an end, and I'll just have to thought, like, I don't want to go home.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, my my parents aren't mean, and I I do like them, but there is a difference in in how they see me compared to um other people in my school.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I just don't want to deal with that.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_05: Kay's parents are fairly skeptical when it comes to his trans identity.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_05: In these conversations with his parents, Kay feels like he has to spend a lot of time proving that what he feels is real, like his gender dysphoria, the mismatch that trans people feel between their gender identity and their body, or how they're perceived by society.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_05: This is how it feels for Kay.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know that feeling when you're walking down the stairs and you think there's another step, or like you miss a step, and you have that feeling where your body's like, huh, what just happened?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what's going on?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Where am I?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's just how looking in the mirror feels, or like crossing an arm over my chest, or hearing my voice, you know, play back on recording.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very like base level, you know, like primal confusion that just turns into intense frustration.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't know if I've ever heard the trans experience described in like such a vivid, like in your body kind of feeling way before.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yeah, that does sound extremely confusing.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it does.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: And these days, when most Americans hear a story about trans people, whether on social media or in the news, chances are they're being exposed to misinformation.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: So we do want to spend a moment correcting some of what's out there.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_05: Someone who works on this is Kay Petrin, co-founder of the Trans Journalists Association.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_05: Since there are two K's in this episode, we'll refer to this one by their last name.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_05: Petrin helped to found the Trans Journalist Association back in 2020.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: A bunch of us had been sort of seeing the same errors in journalism over and over again, and the same misinformation picking up speed and getting, you know, not not properly fact-checked, not properly contextualized by our colleagues.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so a couple dozen of us got together and were like, well, we could do something about this.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: At the time, one of the most high-profile newsrooms getting trans issues wrong was The Atlantic.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: In 2018, they published a cover story with a headline that read, Your child says she's trans, she wants hormones and surgery, she's 13.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: But the person photographed on the cover was not only an adult, but also had visible facial piercings that you can only legally get as an adult.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: And they have since said, you know, they didn't know that their photo would be used in that context, and they wouldn't have consented to its use in that context, a bunch of things like that.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: The model later revealed that they were 22 years old at the time of the shoot, and also not out to his family.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: So the Atlantic fully outed this person, too.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_05: That's so crazy.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_05: I remember when the story came out, there were a lot of pissed-off journalists.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_05: The other thing about this story is that it heavily focused on detransition.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_05: This is not a widespread phenomenon.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_05: And the Atlantic is only one example of this, but many news outlets in recent years have cited these fishy statistics about the number of people who regret undergoing transition.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I feel like I see this repeated over and over at this point.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: They like harp on it.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: And often when you see reporting on trans people, it's less likely to even be about like their experience navigating the world and more about whether their experience can even be believed, right?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_05: Remember at the beginning of the episode, Kay told us his parents were kind of skeptical about all this trans stuff.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_05: That skepticism is everywhere, even in situations where the data doesn't really back it up.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: I for example, this recent paper from Virginia Commonwealth University actually looked at all the available data on transition regret and found it to not be reliable.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: But Petrin says it's still fairly common to see news outlets frame trans stories through this lens of regret.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: What journalists were sort of picking up on was this regret narrative that was spun in a way that was just very misleading and not particularly reflective of either what the research says or what, you know, people or even in some of the cases in the story, their own sources said actually reflected their experiences.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_05: It reminds me a bit of the so-called ex-gay movement of the early 90s that pushed the narrative that gay people could be, quote, reformed and live straight lives after all.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_05: Spoiler alert, a lot of those prominent ex-gays have since come out as gay.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_05: Again.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, you don't say, Anne.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Petron is a data journalist by trade.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: So they helped to build a tool that allows them to scan coverage.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: I as a journalist, I find this so cool.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: Pull out stories that are relevant to trans people, and then code them based on the quality of the coverage.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: Meaning, does this story actually quote reliable sources?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Do they even quote actual trans people?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: What we ended up finding for the stories that we were able to analyze was that uh A, trans communities were often framed in this very political abstract term, where, you know, there would be a Republican quoted and a Democrat quoted, um, but there would be really no sense of the impact or consequence for trans people or trans communities.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: Trans organizations were not being quoted very often, and then many of the stories were about trans youth and things that would impact trans youth, but trans youth were barely ever quoted.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_05: This is important.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_05: It's part of why you don't often hear from kids like Kay and why we thought it was important that he speak for himself.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_05: Typically, you need a parent or guardian's permission to interview a minor.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, this can be complicated if a trans kid is not out to their family, but that's also why you don't usually hear from the families who are working through these questions every day.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: This is Andy, Kay's dad.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_07: Introverted in a way, but also uh, you know, recently has been discovering themselves as far as like getting into theater and things like that.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_07: Uh has a combination of having, you know, like book smarts, but also likes to do very active things.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_05: When Kay first came out to his parents as trans, Andy and his wife took a wait-and-see approach.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_07: Around that time, our older daughter uh said that she was non-binary at the time, and she's kind of uh you know, changed her mind and uh identified more as female over time.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_07: And um we've we kind of thought, okay, this other kid's kind of going through that same journey, we'll just kind of uh let it play out a bit.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_07: And we've had some of these conversations with K too, thinking about okay, is it just a trend?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_07: Is it a phase?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_07: You know, something that KL grow out of.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_07: And so, you know, I I've heard the term watchful waiting, and I'd say that was kind of the mode we were in, was kind of not being too aggressive with questions, um having a little bit of parent skepticism, thinking about trying to be open-minded, as I like to say, but not letting your brains fall out of and um and I guess that's kind of both of our personalities.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_07: My wife and I are we're both kind of very relaxed, kind of see how things go type of personalities.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: The watchful waiting, Andy mentioned, used to be the standard of care for trans kids.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it's understandable that a parent would wait and see how their child ends up making sense of their identity.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: But medical associations now recognize that gender-affirming care is appropriate for kids who exhibit a consistent, insistent, and persistent need for it.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: And Andy says for Kay, it's getting more and more persistent.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_07: Aaron Powell But as a parent, there's you know, it's always that you want what's best for your kid in the long term, not just right now.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_07: And so I think it's a little bit of kind of bargaining with the kid we've known growing up as a daughter, and saying, okay, can I have that just a little bit longer until we figure things out?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_07: But um, I understand, you know, from Kay's perspective, it's it's more insistent.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_05: It's a delicate bargain.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_05: I interviewed Kay and his father almost a month apart.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_05: Kay first and then Andy.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_07: And in the time that elapsed between these interviews, it seemed like everything was going well with Kay, and um I was at work and I got a call from my wife Karen that uh she just got a call from the sheriff's department saying that uh Kay had uh tried to kill themselves.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_07: It it didn't work, thankfully, and Kay at a certain point realized, okay, I'm not gonna complete this and called 988 and uh ended up in the emergency room at a local hospital.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_07: Um I guess Kay had been a lot been building up internally, including some, you know, although the school environment was r has been really good.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_07: There was some stressors related to senior year and things like that.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_07: Um transition conversations are probably part of part uh a piece of that, but you know, a few different stressors kind of coming to a head that we just didn't i in hindsight it looked like something was off, but I just attributed it to being like under the weather or something like that.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_05: But the fact that this happened in the course of our reporting on this episode is an absolutely chilling illustration of the stakes for Kay's family and for all trans families that find themselves under extreme political scrutiny.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it reminds me of uh what Phil Nash told us in the first episode after the passage of Amendment 2.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: He remembered a spate of suicides.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: And psychologist Glenda Russell actually studied the mental health impacts of Amendment 2 on Colorado's LGBTQ community in the 90s.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: So she wrote about her findings in a book called Voted Out: The Psychological Consequences of Anti-Gay Politics.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: And she interviewed more than 650 queer people and found that they had an increase in symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress, as well as increased fear of harassment and discrimination.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, now compare that to the US trans survey conducted by the Advocates for Trans Equality Education Fund.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_05: 2022 was the most recent survey, and it found almost 80% of respondents reported having suicidal thoughts in their lifetime, and 40% had attempted suicide.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: On the flip side, uh more than 70% of those who had undergone either social or medical transition reported being happy and satisfied with their lives.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Those positive outcomes are nowhere to be found in this national debate on trans lives.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_05: And even though the two measures on the ballot this year won't affect Andy's family directly, he says this intense political focus on trans people has not been helpful to his family as they try to figure out the best way to care for their child.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_05: K.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_07: Our politics shouldn't have to be this way, and definitely uh treating transgender folks in the community this way is not appropriate.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_05: Here's Nadine Bridges again, the organizer fighting Protect Kids Colorado.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_04: They're terrified and parents are angry about that.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um and why are we attacking such a small population?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_04: You know, this is a small population of community, um, and they just deserve to live their lives with joy and happiness, um, going to school, playing with their friends, um, seeking medical care without intervention.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, and yeah, the the families are hard broken.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: Bridges says that while they're prepared to fight to the bone against these measures, One Colorado is also facing the same funding challenges that many other LGBTQ advocacy groups have faced in the last two years.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because just like in the fight against Colorado for Family Values and Amendment 2, and the Alliance Defending Freedom and Masterpiece Cake Shop, Protect Kids Colorado has a lot of money behind these ballot initiatives.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_05: I actually have their funding report.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_05: Why don't we take a look?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_05: They recently filed a report with the Colorado Secretary of State's office showing that Jeff Kors donated$25,000.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, oh, Jeff Kors as in Kors Beer?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, Kors as in the beer.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_05: Jeff is a trustee with the Adolph Kors Foundation, as well as Colorado Christian University and Hillsdale College, another private religious university.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_05: That donation is a quarter of all the money raised by Protect Kids Colorado during the 2026 election cycle.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_05: Another 10,000 came from the Family Policy Alliance Foundation, which is the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, sounds familiar.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yes, Focus on the Family, okay.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_05: They're based in good old Colorado Springs, but they raise money to support trans sports bands in multiple states.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is exactly what we've been talking about over the last few episodes.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: This is the Colorado conservative blueprint that gets packaged up and shipped into other states.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: So of course it's starting right here with focus on the family, this group that's been involved since the 90s.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_05: Add to that pile another 10,000 from the Truth and Liberty Foundation, co-founded by televangelist Andrew Womack.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, I'm seeing another 10K contribution from Protect Kids Colorado.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: And what does that mean?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Alexa, you are reading that right.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_05: In addition to operating as a political issue committee, which requires them to report where all their money comes from, they also operate a separate 501 called Protect Kids Colorado.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_05: That tax status means that they do not have to disclose where their money comes from.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, a good old-fashioned dark money group.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, one of those.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_05: Which means I can't even tell you where all their funding comes from because they're not legally obligated to report it.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_05: And there is another billionaire-backed dark money group behind eight of the 15 measures on Colorado's 2026 midterm ballot.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's called Advance Colorado.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_05: Eight of the 15.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_05: Together with Protect Kids Colorado, they're taking over a majority of the initiatives on the midterm ballot.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_05: It's a wish list of conservative priorities, and actually one of the longest ballots ever in Colorado's history.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and June Churchill, a civil servant running for Denver City Council, spoke about this long ballot at a rally.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_06: She said the bulk of it is written to enrich private prisons, entrench the oil and gas industry, force cooperation with ICE, and protect our state's numerous billionaires from having to pay their fair share.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_05: Like a conservative Christmas list.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_05: And this dark money setup is happening with the anti-trans initiatives in other states too, like Protect Girls Pack in Nevada or Protect Girls Sports in Maine, which has been linked to far-right billionaire Richard Euline.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_05: While all these groups try to present themselves as grassroots efforts, the truth is that there's some serious billionaire spending shaping ballots in this year's midterm election.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of this calls to mind the Amendment 2 chapter of Colorado's history, to be honest.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: But there is one big difference.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: In the 90s, it was much easier to figure out who was behind these efforts.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, they took credit for it pretty blatantly, but now the truth isn't so clear.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_06: When billionaires are picking your pockets, they're paying hate groups to point the finger at a minority.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_06: Down with the billionaires.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: In this billionaire dark money landscape, the counter campaigns are going truly grassroots.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_06: Without you talking to your neighbors, calling your loved ones, and telling them why these propositions hurt all Coloradans, your neighbors and loved ones will vote yes to discrimination.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_06: Are we going to let that happen?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_06: Are we going to become the hate state once more?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_06: Tonight I expect each and every one of you to pick up the phone, sign up to knockdoors, and contribute your time to protecting our community.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_06: You will save lives by doing so.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_05: That's June Churchill again at the rally against these ballot measures.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_05: And Nadine Burgess of One Colorado is on the same page.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_05: She says she works with a network of parents and allies, encouraging them to go into PTA meetings and start asking questions about how these measures would be enforced, like the sports ban.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_04: Who's doing the cheek swab?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_04: Who gets to decide who gets a cheek swab, right?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_04: And once parents start asking those questions, then it's a different story, right?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's like, wait, so my kid can also be forced to get a cheek swab?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_04: Like what and how far does it go?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: As we mentioned before, Protect Kids Colorado has not explained how teams or school districts are meant to enforce the ballot proposal.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: Even a genetic test using a cheek swab would not meet the requirements of the language in the ballot measure because it refers specifically to reproductive organs.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Besides, that kind of test would still cost schools about$1,000 per student.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: We looked it up.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_05: In fact, Erin Lee, executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, and one of the architects of the two measures, said it's her hope that the measure will act as a deterrent and that sex testing wouldn't be necessary.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, wait, wait.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't skipping over that enforcement question going to cause a lot of confusion?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, maybe that's the point.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_05: Kind of like how Amendment 2 confused voters in the 90s.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, possibly.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's why Representative Brianna Tatone says voters should keep their eye on the ball.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: She says the conservative movement is trying to achieve larger goals than just kicking trans kids off their basketball teams.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_08: But what people don't really know is that the new thing that the Heritage Foundation was talking about with Title IX is that there is a clear plan now to really just reduce women in sports altogether.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_08: They don't want them to be in sports, and the way that they say it is that, well, they're too delicate and they need to be protected and they need to be put back in the home.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_05: Title IX is a federal civil rights law that ensures gender equity in academia, and so by extension, sports teams.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_05: The Heritage Foundation, the conservative nonprofit behind Project 2025, published a report in July of this year called Title IX Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: So Anne, it sounds like with the Heritage Foundation attacking Title IX, Representative Chitone is saying we're going from protecting kids to a full-on trad wife scenario.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it looks like it.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_05: And June Churchill says that this latest push from the hate state is about something much more sinister.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_06: Targeting trans people in sports is about a couple things, fundamentally, from a legal perspective.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_06: It is about defining trans people by or so-called biological sex versus.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_06: Because once you encode that legal precedent into law, you can then extend it into other arenas.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_06: So if in trans sports they view trans women as biological men, then, well, they're biological men in this one sense.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_06: Why not in this other sense?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_06: Why not in this other sense?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_06: Why not in this other sense?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_06: And it clears the path for legal discrimination across all categories of public life.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_05: Like we mentioned, Churchill is running for Denver City Council.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_05: She's lived in Denver since she was 18, but she grew up in Colorado Springs.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_05: So it might not surprise you to learn that her family is deeply conservative.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_05: And she says that gives her some unique insight into how serious things are right now.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_06: We're seeing even the first stages of like moving towards an anti-transgenicide in this country.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_06: Right?
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_06: I don't use that term lightly, but it's the steps that we're taking right now as a country.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_06: Because if I go to, you know, if I go to Texas and I use the bathroom, I could be charged with a felony.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_06: If I go to, you know, say for example, Idaho, someone could call the cops on me and get a bounty put out on me.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_06: Once Trump got elected for the second time, I thought, like many trans people have, do I leave?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_06: But what I saw in my area was first, tons of people can't leave internationally.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_06: So we have had a surge of trans refugees into Colorado.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_06: Most new trans people I've met are moving from Texas, Florida, from Kansas, Missouri, right?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_06: A bunch of red states.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_06: So, first of all, there's all these folks here who don't necessarily have deep roots in the community but have fled and need protection.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_06: And this is a constituency which is completely unrepresented in our politics.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_06: That's one.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_06: Another piece.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_06: If you flee fascism, it follows you.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta say, that's a pretty terrifying statement, Anne.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_05: It is.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, we know that trans families are seeking out safer states to live as their true selves, but what June's saying is a safe state will only stay safe for so long.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_05: We started off this series talking about the two Colorados at war with one another.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_05: The deep-pocketed conservative Colorado that's been at war with the queer sanctuary Colorado.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_05: But increasingly, this feels like a conflict that's playing out in pretty much every state.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: There aren't just two Colorados, there are two Americas.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: Big money conservative groups are bringing this fight to Colorado's doorstep, and history tells us they will bring it to any other state that emerges as a sanctuary for queer and trans people.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we're already seeing it in another progressive hub.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_05: Seattle had such an influx of trans people move in that the city's LGBTQ commission asked the mayor to declare a civil emergency because their local nonprofits were running low on resources.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_05: And now Washington is one of the states voting on an anti-trans ballot measure this year.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: So while queer acceptance in some spaces is better than it's ever been, queer people find themselves under sustained attack in whole new ways.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, according to the trans legislation tracker, 840 anti-trans bills have been introduced in 2026 alone across 43 states, and more than 60 have passed.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_05: Regardless of how this election turns out, the anti-trans moral panic will probably be far from over.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, Amendment 2 sparked this national boycott that had celebrities like Barbara Streisand involved.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: True, we're not quite seeing that kind of vocal support around these midterms, despite Pedro Pascal's protect the doll shirt.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_05: Bless him, bless him.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I still hold out a little hope.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Just as Amendment 2 inspired a wave of organizing, these ballot propositions seem to be doing the same.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: Nadine Bridges with One Colorado says Colorado has a special place in this fight.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: You know, as a purple state, your job is to demonstrate what's possible, what blue states need to be paying attention to, and what red states can think about doing next, right?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_04: What kind of messaging do we need to learn about so that other folks can uh can can lead in that way, right?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um you see and we see in Texas is what's going on.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_04: They're attacking hospitals, they're, you know, putting up these uh detransitioning clinics, uh, they're uh outing and doxing uh parents.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I will tell you that places like Florida and Texas at a municipal level and a local level, they're doing incredible things.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um so we also have a job to do in Colorado is to learn about what's happening in those states.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_05: In the 90s, the passing of amendment to sparked a nationwide backlash.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_05: The work of Phil Nash, Mary Celeste, Richard Evans, and all their supporters eventually got amendment to defeated at the U.S.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_05: Supreme Court and reshaped Colorado from a conservative leaning purple state to a pretty solidly blue state with robust protections for LGBTQ people.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_05: It made space for trans-elected officials like Brianna Titone and hopefuls like June Churchill.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: Now, at the time of this recording, we don't yet know what could happen if these ballot measures pass, if the hate state triumphs over progressive Colorado.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: But as we wait for the next chapter in the story of the two Colorados and the two Americas.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_05: I think it makes sense to give Kay the last word.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_05: This is what he'd like you to know about trans people.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: That like you've probably also like talked to a trans person and you didn't know.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and also just yeah, understanding that like we're everywhere, man.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I mean, like I'm I'm nerdy and you know I I do board game club and theater stuff, but I also um have like a wilderness first aid certification.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: I worked on a farm this summer.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um that trans people aren't just like this block of the population set off to the side in their own little corner.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Also just knowing that like there's no like secret agenda.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to live.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to be happy and live.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to Hate State.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you for listening to Hate State.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: Hate State is a production of Oddbird Sound and Word and Lookout News.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_05: Our editors and executive producers are Carolina Muriel and Isis Madrid of Pizza Shark.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: This episode was written and produced by me, Xander McMahon, Ann Maria Wadd, and Chris Fazari.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_05: Our music was composed by Addison Ryder with additional music from Epidemic Sound.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_05: Our engineer is Patrick McNamy King.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: Please leave a rating and a review wherever you get your podcasts.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Consider sharing it with a friend, and you can find all of our reporting for this series at lookoutnews.org.