This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
There's free advice for Colorado's all-leftist state officials on how to save their taxpayers a million dollars. Or maybe more.
If they want.
It comes from Krista Kafer's Substack column and concerns the state's agenda to violate the U.S. Constitution – repeatedly – by mandating an official government message to which residents must subscribe.
It first showed up a decade back when state officials prosecuted baker Jack Phillips because, based on his Christian faith, he refused a customer's demand that he endorse same-sex marriage with his cake artistry.
State officials from the office of the Democrat governor, Jared Polis, on down to the state's civil rights commission, decided their "nondiscrimination" ideology trumped the Constitution, and such a Christian faith wasn't allowed in their state. They launched legal actions against Phillips, including an order that he undergo indoctrination into the beliefs of the state.
Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court not only handed Colorado a huge loss in that case, the justices publicly humiliated and scolded state officials for their intolerance of Christianity, their bigoted ideology. The state likely spent millions in staff salaries, legal expenses and more to lose the fight.
The state didn't learn, as its officials later took up virtually the same issue in their attacks on Lorie Smith's Christianity, ordering her to promote same-sex marriages with her web design business.
Again, the state lost at the Supreme Court and this time it came with a stinging bill of $1.5 million taxpayers are being forced to pay for the lawyers who brought Smith's successful case. And it had to pay its own expenses to lose again.
Now there's a third fight afoot, giving the state an opportunity to complete its strikeout.
The column points out that while the Constitution provides that the government neither can censor language with which it disagrees, or compel speech it likes, the state is still doing both.
The state law, adopted in 2019 "censors free speech between a mental health professional and his or her clients," the Substack explains.
"The law dictates that a therapist affirm a girl or boy's desire to transition to the opposite sex. The counselor cannot legally engage in conversation that will help the teen accept his or her body and biological gender identity. If she does, the therapist could be fined $5,000 per conversation or could even lose her license."
The lawmakers who adopted the ideological agenda, mostly have "no experience in the mental health field." But they insist that "gender confusion must be confirmed rather than challenged."
"For many mental health professionals, this is tantamount to treating anorexia by telling a patient she is right, she is too fat," the column explained.
The state has left mental health professions with the choice "no one in a free society ever should: they can do right by their patients and lose their license, speak only as the government demands against their professional judgement, or refuse to take clients with gender dysphoria who have come to them for help."
This fight now has been advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Colorado licensed counseling professional Kaley Chiles is challenging the state's speech censorship.
And she, the column explained, "is likely to prevail."
The column explained the state's choice:
"Gender identity is a contentious subject. Everyone cares about struggling teens but disagrees on how they can best be helped. Some people believe it is best to affirm the alternate identity through counseling and medical interventions; others contend the best choice is to help teens accept their bodies and gender identity. The debate over best practices shows no sign of abating. But the government cannot intervene and silence those with whom a bare majority of lawmakers disagree.
"Exit polling from the last election showed that many voters do not believe that human beings can change their sex or gender and they resent being shamed or silenced over their concerns about bathrooms, team sports, and treatment of teens with gender dysphoria. Democrats continue to push an aggressive trans agenda at its own political peril."
At the very least, Kafer said, Colorado lawmakers should repeal the law and "act in their best interest to save money and their political future."
