Colorado Voters Face Trans School Sports Ban in New Propositions

The air in the valley hangs heavy with a specific kind of tension, the same brittle, cold static that preceded the 1992 election. It is a feeling you can almost taste, metallic and sharp, lingering in the back of your throat when you think about what we voted for then. We were teenagers, many of us in JeffCo, watching the news from our living rooms as Amendment 2 passed with 53.41% of the vote. We thought we were safe in our hallways, but we weren’t. The country looked at us and saw a moniker that would stick to our skin for years: the “Hate State.”

Now, as we prepare to vote on Propositions 134 and 135, the obvious take is that these measures are about protecting children. But if you look closely at the history written in our own state constitution, that narrative collapses under its own weight. The Colorado Sun reported on this perspective through a piece by Nicolais, who argues that these propositions are not shields for the young but rather state-mandated discrimination aimed at a vulnerable population. It is a counterintuitive claim, isn’t it? To say that a rule designed to protect is actually an instrument of attack. But the evidence suggests it is true.

Nicolais draws a direct line between the shockwave of 1992 and the current political climate. Back then, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion declared that Amendment 2 “seems so inexplicable by anything but an animus toward the class it affects.” It took years to shed that tarnish. When civil unions were passed nearly two decades later, testimony still referenced the lasting damage to our reputation. Now, Nicolais argues, we are repeating that history with a new target. The LGBTQ community has found broad acceptance in the state, but the transgender community has been singled out. It is like a herd of elk too strong for the wolves to attack all at once, but the wolves keep circling, trying to separate one out for a concerted strike.

This isn’t just local sentiment; it is part of a national tide. Nicolais notes that when author J.K. Rowling became a forceful opponent of transgender rights, she lent credibility to every other anti-transgender group. Then Donald Trump used scare tactics to successfully undermine Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign. Now that movement is spreading across states, including ours. Propositions 134 and 135 are just one more outlet for that animus.

Consider Proposition 134, which would bar transgender kids from participating in school sports under their preferred gender. Nicolais calls it a solution in search of a problem, a classic example of using policy to signal hostility rather than address need. The rough edge here is the cost of our state’s identity. We spent years rebuilding trust after Amendment 2. We built a culture where most of the LGBTQ community is accepted. Do we want to tear that down again?

There’s a warmth to the idea of community, but it is fragile. It requires us to look past the political theater and see the human beings in our schools, our neighborhoods, our lives. If we vote for these propositions, we are voting to let the wolves in again. We are choosing to be defined by our animus rather than our acceptance. The question isn’t whether we can afford the political cost; it is whether we can live with the moral one.

The final image that stays with me isn’t a ballot or a sign, but the silence of a hallway. The kind of silence that falls when someone is excluded from a game they love, or a classroom they belong in. It is a quiet, heavy silence that echoes the one we heard in 1992, waiting to see if we will let it ring out again.