Caldara: State power weaponized against out-of-favor gay group

(You can listen to this column, read by the author, here.)

Being gay but not holding a liberal opinion makes you a hate group.

It’s fine to be part of the LGBTQIA+ crowd in Colorado. In fact, you’ll be celebrated, and, if you wish, officially honored with a flag that has flown over the Capitol.

However, if you’re part of the LGBTQIA+ community but don’t believe small children should be indoctrinated into thinking they were born to the wrong gender, well then, you’re a hater and must be canceled. So says our state government.

According to the state of Colorado, only straights can be against indoctrinating little children to want to mutilate their bodies.

So, being gay but not holding the progressive opinion on one particular issue makes you a hate group. And government may deny you a service everyone else can get, like buying a flag that flew over our Capitol, the people’s building, owned by all (except those gays who are so perverted they don’t like convincing kids they’re in the wrong bodies).

Colorado Politics reporter Marianne Goodland broke the story of the state suspending a program that allows people, even people who have opinions you might not agree with, to buy a flag that’s been flown over the state and federal Capitols along with a certificate signed by the governor.

Why? Because Gays Against Groomers did it.

They filled out the required form, got their flags, and put out a jovial post on X about it. After which the state learned Gays Against Groomers was labeled a “hate group” by, well, not the state government and certainly not with any due process.

Enter the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, the self-chosen and complete arbiters of which groups are “hate groups” and which are not. And Colorado government accepts their opinions as factual and non-disputed. And guess who’s a hate group?

Gays Against Groomers, as the name might suggest, is a private organization of gay people who wish to stop the over sexualization, indoctrination and medical mutilation of children to become transgender. They have no position on what people do once they become an adult.

Perhaps you think they’re wrong, even hateful. But I would hope you think they should have the same access to governmental services as any pro-trans group.

Gays Against Groomers never had their moment in court or any due process before they were labeled a hate group. Yet your state government casually accepted the SPLC verdict and called them hateful, stopping the flag sales program.

Though all this might seem rather trivial, there is a sizable danger here. Our state accepts and publicly pronounces as a finding of fact this group of caring people is a hate group. Such a pronouncement can have a devastating effect on any organization.

Much like the McCarthy-era accusations of screen writers being communists destroyed lives and livelihoods, the Polis administration accusation of “hate” can do the same. At least McCarthy had public hearings.

The executive director of the Department of Personnel and Administration declared, “regrettably, this request was not appropriately vetted by the department.” Of course, the form used to order the flags made no mention that applicants would be vetted at all. Nothing like making up new policy on the spot to take out groups that don’t agree with you.

The governor’s mouthpiece in denouncing Gays Against Groomers said, “Hate has no place in Colorado, and Gov. Polis denounces hate in all of its forms.” Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, perhaps some people consider encouraging small children to seek medical mutilation is hateful against children?

The ACLU of old battled for neo-Nazis in Skokie, Ill., to have their right of free speech. Ordering some flags from the state is now more hateful than neo-Nazis parading? What happened to those principled liberals of old? Today’s liberals, like those at the Southern Poverty Law Center, aid in silencing speech and dissent.

We all should sleep well tonight knowing the bigoted opinions of out-of-state pressure groups are taken as fact by our state officials. But we should have nightmares that our state officials are choosing the winners and losers in what we used to call free speech and rule of law. You know, the ideal that government must treat all of us the same.

Though not meaning to, the state of Colorado just proved the power of the fascist trans movement. It’s government weaponized against citizens they don’t like.

Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

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