PODCAST: A Colorado Mother’s Fight Against Gender Ideology in Schools
Erin Lee, a Colorado mother and founder of Protect Kids Colorado, joins Freedom to Learn this week to share her transformation from an unsuspecting parent to a passionate advocate.
Erin’s journey began in 2021 when her 12-year-old daughter attended what was called an “art club” at school, but was actually a secret gender and sexuality club run by an activist organization. This led to a year-long struggle to protect her daughter from the cult-like mentality of gender ideology. Now, Erin leads efforts to educate parents and challenge radical legislation in Colorado, such as HB25-1312, which threatens parental rights and children’s well-being. Her story is a powerful call to action for parents everywhere.
This post features an abridged transcript of the interview, highlighting her family’s story, her practical advice for parents, and legislative updates from Colorado. After Erin and I spoke, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed House Bill 1312 into law. Erin’s organization, along with Protect Kids Colorado, Defending Education, and Do No Harm, promptly filed a lawsuit.
Abridged Transcript: Erin Lee on Freedom to Learn
Your advocacy journey began when your daughter was harmed by gender ideology at her public school. What happened?
We were kind of sleepwalking, very liberal leaning, non-faithful parents in 2021. I actually studied elementary education in school, and so was very pro-public education. And we sent our 12-year-old daughter off to her public school on a regular Tuesday. And when she came home, she had been in an art club. So we thought that’s what we gave our permission for, but it was actually a secret gender and sexuality awareness club where they brought in an outside NGO called Splash. And the Splash organization taught my daughters things like if you’re not completely comfortable in your body, that means you’re transgender. If you don’t know who you’re sexually attracted to, that means you’re queer.
And then she was what I call glitter bombed for proclaiming those identities. What 12-year-old girl is fully comfortable in her body? And then she didn’t know who she was sexually attracted to yet that had legitimately not crossed her mind. So she was given swag, you know, toys and flags and stickers. She was taught concepts like polyamory, how to access puberty blockers without my knowledge or consent, how to see a gender affirming care therapist in her school without my knowledge or consent, how to get her gender affirming care letter written again without parent knowledge or consent, Parents were repeatedly vilified in this meeting. “Your parents may not understand your new identity, we’ll be your family, you don’t have to tell your parents about this meeting and our future meetings,” and we’re lucky that our daughter came home and told us everything that happened. She was kind of excited to proclaim her new transgender status, her new name, her new pronouns and that led us down almost a year of the worst worst year of our life where she really fell deep into that dark pit of trans identity and believed she was born in the wrong body and that we didn’t support her because we weren’t willing to go along with it. And we took her to a therapist in Colorado who affirmed because that’s state law in.
When you say affirmed, the therapist did not affirm biological reality.
Correct. Actually, there’s a law that was passed in 2019 that requires all licensed therapists to only affirm the child’s gender confusion. They cannot question it or try to get to the root cause. so therapy made her worse. That led to suicidality. She left us a suicide note. The pediatrician essentially bullied us with the suicide myth. Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter? You’d better go along with it or she’ll kill herself. You better call her the new name. You’d better give her this psychotropic medication or else she’s going to kill herself. It was almost a year later that my husband had a really blunt conversation with her that gave her the off-ramp to say “I don’t want to do this anymore, I’m not trans, help me get out of this,” and so we were able to help her through it. We’re one of the success stories that are few and far between because we learned this is such a pervasive issue that it affects thousands and thousands of families, that so many kids in all 50 states are being transitioned to the opposite sex at school behind parents’ backs, it’s being kept secret. And we had opened the door on such a big issue that has affected so many families. And so we went really, really public about what we had been through.
What you’re describing sounds like what’s called rapid onset gender dysphoria. And like you said, it seems to be happening to families across the nation. And often these stories are so similar, they’re almost identical.
I encourage parents not to put their kids in traditional public schools.
I actually run a rapid onset gender dysphoria support group on Facebook that’s got hundreds and hundreds of parents. And you’re right, the stories are almost always the same. They got my daughter at the onset of puberty, at the height of COVID. She is a shy, quirky, kind of a misfit kid.
Often this happens, some people estimate up to 50 % of kids are autistic or on the spectrum that fall into this. A lot of them are into anime or video games or alternative art. They’re just the kids that don’t quite fit in and they’re looking for community and connection.
And what we learned is in these school settings, they’ve normalized transgenderism. They plant seeds early and often, you know, talking about reading these books in kindergarten, first grade, talking about pronouns, having these secret clubs like the daughter, the one that my daughter went to, the GSA club. And so they really plant the seeds and open the door for kids who are misfits to think, “this is why I’m awkward, or this community will accept me when I don’t fit in with what the mainstream kids are doing.”
I often say this isn’t the cheerleader or the football player who is getting caught in the gender cult. These are the kids who feel that they need some sort of explanation for why they’ve had this lifetime of not fitting in, of being bullied, of being told that they’re strange or weird. It’s understandable that these emotionally vulnerable, differently wired kids are seeking some sort of relief from a life that’s hard for them and hard in a way that they can’t explain. And then because we’re talking about kids who are on the autism spectrum or maybe ADHD and tend to fixate, once they’re in, they’re all in. And then like you said, there’s this glitter bombing that kind of wraps them with this affirmation. Again, not an affirmation of biological reality, an affirmation of this pernicious lie. How is all of this connected to mental health issues that these kids are dealing with?
It’s almost like a cult-like mentality, what happens with the kids. they offer them a solution to all their problems. I know that was the case for my daughter. was like, “Well, puberty is uncomfortable. But if you just take these puberty blockers, that will stop. And you’ll become magically comfortable in your body. And you may not fit in, but we’ve got this community. And we will be your people. And we’ll be your family and your friends now.” And so it really is almost a cult-like mentality. And in my experience, they’re never happier as a result of trans identification. It spiraled my daughter into such confusion that led to depression, that led to suicidality. I’ve yet to meet a parent or a child who’s gone through this, where they know, my kid was genuinely happier because they were identifying as the opposite sex. It’s an impossible pursuit. You can’t change your sex.
There’s this false promise of “trans joy” that never manifests itself.
Or euphoria, and that’s temporary. I’ve learned a lot of these kids have mental health issues going into it. Trans identification is a form of body dysmorphia. I think it’s akin to anorexia. When I was younger, a lot of girls had eating problems. We weren’t comfortable with our bodies, and that’s very natural, especially while starting puberty. 11 to 15 years old, where you’re developing and it’s awkward and you feel weird in your body. But the girls going through anorexia, we don’t then prescribe them diet pills. We don’t affirm that, something’s wrong with your body. You should stop eating. You should throw up. You should lose weight. We help them through the mental health distress.
And that’s exactly what this trans identification is. It’s a mental health issue. It’s a body dysmorphia issue and we have to treat it as such. And it’s really scary to think of the parents like me being bullied for not being willing to go along with it… the school board, the administration, everyone was building this coalition against us behind closed doors. We were immediately branded guilty until proven innocent because we weren’t willing to go along with it.
Let’s talk about what parents should do when they’re in a situation like yours. You did the kind of the top option that shows up in books like Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage and in some of the other ROGD circles for advice to parents: pull the kid out of the environment that’s fostering this, that’s creating this identity and driving a wedge between the emotionally vulnerable child and the parent. So number one, pull the kid out. What else?
I run a support group for hundreds of parents going through this and my advice is always harsh. It’s remove every single negative influence. So for us, that was get her out of the school environment, like no way they’re going to continue to influence her. We took the cell phone away and I had, you know, she hated me for it. And I had to have that conversation. Like it was my fault giving you this. You’re 12. You should not have unfettered access to the internet in your pocket at all times. That’s my fault.
That was a bad parenting move on my part. And now I have to undo what I’ve done. You have to give me your phone back. We cut off the internet. We cut off toxic friendships. The people in her life that were feeding it, yeah, you’re Toby, you’re a boy. I support you. Those friendships had to end. They’re not gonna let any negative influence in her life anymore.
Another piece of advice for parents is not to go along with it. Be creative if you have to, but do not call them by the other name. Do not capitulate to the pronouns, the pressure to call them whatever they want to be called. You’re only feeding their mental health distress and pushing them further down this rabbit hole and it will become harder to pull them out. I mean, a 90 minute meeting proceeded by some subtle seed planting by the school district led to almost a year of my daughter’s identification. That’s with us doing very drastic things to get her out of it. So remove every negative influence, don’t affirm and replace them with positive things.
You can’t just take the phone away and the internet away and expect her to sit in her room by herself. We started having more daddy-daughter dates. I would take her to GameStop and we would get Pokemon cards. I would take her to the library more often and get her to youth group at church. And you’ve got to replace the negative influences with positive ones. But it’s not an easy journey out of this nightmare.
Some private schools will have assignments where you need to type something up or research something on the internet. Did you all find any filters or any ways to handle that? Or did you have a wonderful school that was all pencil and paper?
We got lucky on the school that we found—a tiny little private Christian school where she had 16 kids in her class. And for a shy, quirky kid who’s been through such trauma to be able to go into that environment where she could meet everyone quickly and learn each other’s names and very, very hands-on parent forward school where I can be in the classroom any day I want. And they communicate everything that’s coming home.
And my son’s charter school, same thing, no electronics. They have basically no screens. In the entire school, it’s all paper and pen, traditional core knowledge school. So we got lucky with the school choice options that we have here in Colorado. I understand that’s not the case for all parents. I do maintain that homeschool is the safest option when you find yourself in this situation. But we got lucky on that front. We really trust our schools.
You mentioned that you feel like maybe it was a mistake giving her a phone at 12.
I have a son who’s 11 now. And so for his 11th birthday, he got an Apple watch and he can call me, I can call him and that’s it. There’s no internet, there’s no browsing. It’s got a GPS tracker. So if he’s playing in the neighborhood, I know where he is. I can call him home, but it really is just a communication device and he’s limited to three contacts.
And there’s things like that, like the gizmo watch for younger kids. And I actually equipped him to say, hey, if anything funny ever happens at school, or if anyone, anywhere, if an adult asks you to keep a secret, like they did with your sister, or someone makes you uncomfortable, you call mom, even if that’s the classroom. And so I feel safer as a parent knowing he’s got his watch in his backpack and he can call me if he needs to.
Well, with so many school districts and now states going cell phone free, bell to bell, those Apple watches are going to have to be put away during the school day. But overall, that does sound like good advice. I would say my 16-year-old has a flip phone and my 14-year-old has not gotten a phone yet at all. It is possible, parents.
And no laptop. We have a desktop the kids can use the computer in the office where we can see them. They just don’t have access to the internet without us knowing what they’re doing and there are lots of parental controls. If you do have a phone, lock it down. Make sure you know what’s happening. I just think technology is so dangerous There are so many pitfalls for these kids and especially when it comes to trans identification.
You know, there are so many predators online. In fact my school district during my daughter’s art club connected her to her groomers on Discord and WhatsApp secretly and gave a cell phone number to the woman who groomed her. So she was secretly connected to her groomers online and avenues I didn’t even know existed. I didn’t even know what Discord was until I found the email from the schools that was connecting our children with that woman.
This is an adult. They connected her with an adult.
A “trusted adult.” What an overused, inaccurate term. No adult can self identify as a trusted adult to someone else’s child.
I have four really practical things I tell all parents. Teach your kids these things early and often.
- Safe adults don’t ask you to keep secrets.
- No one should ask you to label yourself. You’re a kid, you got all the time in the world to figure it out.
- Male and female, can’t change it. XX-XY, we’re believers. So I like to say God doesn’t make mistakes. He made us male and female, but it’s scientific too. XX-XY; and
- Trust your instinct. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. And you have the authority to remove yourself from that situation. And that’s where the watch comes in. If you need to call mom, get your watch and call me and let me know that someone’s made you uncomfortable.
And so you can prepare your kids for these situations without diving directly into the topics of sexuality and gender ideology.
What are some other ways that schools are pressuring parents to affirm gender identities? What are some ways that schools are just cultivating this in the classroom?
Colorado passed a 1039 last year, the non-legal name change bill, and that forces teachers to call a child whatever they want to be called, no age distinction and no requirement to tell parents. And so there are no limitations to the law. The child could be a girl on Monday, a boy on Tuesday, a cat on Wednesday, and it would be illegal for the teacher not to affirm whatever identity they say they are that day. That’s now law.
So people in other states might think, we’re in good shape now. Our state is heading the right direction. Federally, things are happening that are protecting parental rights, protecting emotionally vulnerable students. We’ve got executive orders on our side. We’re fine. So you’re telling me that in Colorado, not fine.
Well, I’ve had to caution a lot of parents like, Trump is here and his executive orders are great, but he’s only got the power of the federal government. So he can only handle the purse strings of the federal funds that are coming to our state for education. And in Colorado, that’s less than 10% of what funds our local schools. It’s mostly state and local funds, which makes sense. So there’s not a whole lot that they can do. Our state has already said, we’re not going to comply. We’re willing to forego that 10% of funds. And then we, the taxpayers, will incur the burden of not having the additional funding from the federal government.
I was an unsuspecting parent four years ago. I had no idea what was happening. And now that I’ve seen behind the curtain, I understand that the teachers union is at the root of all evil. They are pushing influence. For example, the AFT, the NEA funded my local school board race. Becky Pringle was here in Fort Collins, Colorado, campaigning for a local school board. Why? Because they have influence across the country and they have targeted areas like Fort Collins where I live where they are really pushing these agendas to see how much they can get away with, how much pushback happens, how do we roll this out to the rest of the country. It’s definitely a grand plan and it’s present in all 50 states. Nowhere is immune from this ideology. It runs rampant in our universities.
“Nowhere is immune from this ideology.”
You’ve had to fight a lot in what’s going on in Colorado this year during the legislative session that just wrapped up. Let’s talk about 1312. What was in that?
The worst bill of all time. I call it the “trans your kid or the state will take them and call that man a woman or the state will come after you” bill. It’s important to stress that radical legislation has been passed in Colorado since 2019. So we got a new governor in 2018. He’s one of the master manipulators of our state. He’s a billionaire who uses his own money to flip Colorado that was conservative, then it was purple. Now it is radical leftist blue socialist, and he’s a huge part of that. So in 2019, our governor and the radical legislature, which has a Democrat super majority in the House, Senate, AG, secretary of state and governor, no checks and balances here. They’ve been passing radical legislation since 2019, but I am so grateful. It’s almost been a gift, this bill 1312, that now the whole world is paying attention. They finally boiled the frog. They’ve just been pushing, pushing, pushing bad legislation that lowered the age of healthcare consent to 12, mandated transitioning children and not questioning their gender confusion, mandating that teachers transition kids, mandating the teaching of LGBT and Q starting in first grade social studies with no notification to parents and no opt out option. That’s now mandated curriculum that the Colorado Department of Education has even put out resource sets with first grade lessons about the importance of sex work that are currently on the Colorado Department of Education website.
And these are students who, in probably too many cases, can’t even read yet. And they have to learn about sex workers?
In first grade civics and history class, now as a state mandate from a law that was passed in 2019 that didn’t go into effect until 2024. I think most parents are just asleep at the wheel. I get it. There’s so much bad legislation coming out of our capital. It’s hard to even keep up with what’s happening. So parents have not been paying attention, but 1312 woke up the whole country to what’s happening in Colorado. This basically says it if you don’t use someone’s chosen name according to their gender expression, that’s a form of discrimination.
They did remove a part of the bill that’s still the implications are there. They’ve changed the language, but it defined not calling your child by their preferred name as coercive control and allows the courts the authority to use that in custody situations. They removed that, but the implication is still there. So they redefined chosen name within gender expression within Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, and that can be used against parents in court, both in custody situations., but it also will be used against parents like me who have had CPS weaponized against us. Two parent households with loving parents who say, I will not call my daughter a boy, that can now be used against us in custody situations.
Meaning that the child will be taken away from the loving family and put into the care of the state.
Yeah, and I should mention that in Colorado, one of the bad bills they passed in the last six years is called the Foster Care Bill of Rights, mandates that foster families must affirm. And about 60 % of foster families are Christians. So we’ve lost a lot of foster families, which already there were not enough to meet the needs of all the kids in the system. So and if you look at the kids in the system, at least 50 % of them are gender confused.
So these kids are going into homes where the parents or the foster parents are required by law to affirm their gender confusion. And so I call it the classroom to trafficking pipeline. My daughter was almost put on it. It started with an art club. And then all of a sudden, CPS was in my home. And then all of sudden I learned that the groomers who were in the classroom are licensed social workers and case workers. And they’ve got a network of affirming families who will transition your children once they can remove them from your home.
And I have been in contact with multiple parents, with kids who are still missing, who’ve been trafficked, and parents who’ve gotten their kids off of that conveyor belt, but who were vilified by child protective services and these NGOs for not affirming the confusion.
Erin, all of this is so alarming. How are you rallying opposition at this point?
We will fight it in court just like we do all of our bad laws here in Colorado. You’ll see us, surely we’ll see us at the Supreme Court fighting 1312 in five to six years. But what’s scary is that for five to six years, families are impacted, people will be affected by these radical laws that we have no other recourse but to challenge in court.
What are some practical ways beyond lawsuits that you all are taking this on?
I’ve had a really big campaign for the last four years just to educate parents about what’s happening. I formed an organization called Protect Kids Colorado and we work alongside there’s another great organization called Colorado Parent Advocacy Network. I think our biggest hurdle was just lack of knowledge. Also willful ignorance certainly plays a part, but it’s important for parents to understand they have options.
We are a very pro-school choice state. We’ve got great conservative, classical core knowledge charter schools, private options, we’re a very homeschool-friendly state.
And so, you I think education and exposure is our number one tool. I encourage people to just talk about it in your communities. The most impact we can make is in our own sphere of influence. And so I always encourage parents, protect your kids, get them out of the traditional public schools, but also educate others about what’s happening. We’ve got some great efforts to flip school boards here in areas where we can hopefully take some ground back.
One great thing that’s happening here in Colorado is we’ve got so many great grassroots coalition groups like this parent advocacy network, Gays Against Groomers. We’ve got an org called Grandparents for Kids; their motto is “get off the golf course and get to the school board.” So they give school board testimony. They give legislative testimony. They do grandparent story hours to combat the drag story hours that are happening in our libraries. And so we’re just building this really great coalition of grassroots accidental activists.
We’re running citizen ballot initiatives here. We filed three to fight child trafficking, child mutilation, and men’s and women’s spaces. And so we may not be able to pass good legislation at all. We can’t even fight the bad stuff, but we can take it to the voters. And this is an 80- 20, maybe even 90- 10 issue, gender ideology. So expose and education is step one, but in the 2026 ballot, and we will get there, we’ll get enough signatures to get on the ballot, the dominoes will start to fall once the voters have a say on these issues. It will put our legislators on notice that we’re not going to stand for these radical laws harming our kids anymore.
I’ve helped parents fight back [using public records requests]. They’re very costly. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on them, but there are organizations that are willing to support. I tell all parents, look at what your school’s doing. Look into their emails. always start with the finances, the grant money, and the money that’s coming in will speak volumes and show you what rabbit trails to follow and see what’s really happening behind closed doors.
How can people follow your work?
I go by Erin for parental rights on all social media. I have a website called stopgenderideology.com that’s a resource for parents like me who suddenly find themselves with a gender confused child and have no idea what to do. We also made a film about our story: artclubmovie.com.
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