Central to Christian life and practice is a commitment to honoring the permanence of a person’s biological sex. Christian parents are responsible for raising up their children to know and love the Lord and His truth, creation, and order. Christians protect their children’s innocence, speak the truth in love should their children experience gender dysphoria, and protect their daughters should a biological male invade her bathroom or locker room.
Believe it or not, Colorado just criminalized these Christian convictions.
On May 16, 2025, Gov. Jared Polis signed HB25-1312 (the Kelly Loving Act) into law. According to the bill’s sponsors, the legislation concerns “legal protections for transgender individuals.” But those “protections” target Christian ethics.
HB25-1312 specifies “deadnaming” and “misgendering” as discrimination, classifying a parent’s denial of their child’s preferred name or gender as “coercive control” and “child abuse.” It requires private institutions—chiefly Christian schools—to “affirm” a child’s gender identity and allow students to use any bathroom or locker room they choose. The law also coerces the use of “preferred pronouns” and allows minors to access “gender affirming care” without parental consent. All in all, HB25-1312 places children in the hands of the state—not their parents, and especially not their Christian parents.
Before the Kelly Loving Act crossed Gov. Polis’ desk, a group of Colorado pastors anticipated the existential threat the law would pose to Christian life. Pastor Chase Davis of The Well Church in Boulder, Colorado, joined by William Wolfe, Director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, forged an urgent grassroots response with their movement “Fight 1312.” The movement reached concerned Christians across the nation on X and gathered a bold Christian crowd to rally in protest on the Colorado capitol grounds.
Pastor Davis quickly called out the Kelly Loving Act, testifying in the House:
“HB25-1312 codifies hostility toward Christian beliefs by treating basic biblical convictions as discrimination. To recognize that men and women are distinct, to refuse to affirm gender confusion, and to speak truthfully about a person’s sex are not acts of hatred but of faithfulness to God. HB25-1312 is an affront to truth, to family, and to religious liberty. It seeks to replace God’s authority with state-mandated falsehoods. It criminalizes Christian convictions and makes it illegal to live and speak according to biblical truth.”
After the bill passed the House floor in early April just days after its rushed introduction, Concerned Women for America (CWA) of Colorado State Director Karen Pennington mobilized grassroots leaders and ambassadors to call their Colorado Senators, urging NO votes. Pennington called HB25-1312 a “shocking and misleading bill that does not protect our children.”
On April 11, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist convention joined the Colorado Baptist Convention to voice a similar message to state Senators: “Should this bill become law, it threatens the conscience rights of individuals, the relationship between parents and children, basic free speech rights for all, and will inevitably lead to conflict between church and state.”
Despite the uproar from the Christian community, HB25-1312 advanced through the Colorado Senate with overwhelming support from Democrats and LGBTQ groups. On May 16, the bill became law—but Christians have not backed down. The state is facing its first major lawsuit from a conservative business owner resisting HB25-1312.
On May 28, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed Athletics v. Sullivan on behalf of Jennifer Sey, founder of the Colorado-based clothing brand XX-XY athletics. Sey’s brand is committed to referring to biological male customers as men and biological female customers as female. Her business model is one that proclaims biological reality: her women’s clothes sport an “XX,” the men’s an “XY,” and her marketing centers are defending women’s sports and denouncing transgender ideology.
XX-XY’s business practices are newly classified as discrimination under HB25-1312, but ADF seeks to defend Sey under the First and Fourteenth Amendments’ free speech, religious liberty, and equal protections clauses.
For businesses like Sey’s, Christians schools, churches, conservative and faith-based businesses, and parents across Colorado, HB25-1312 is an existential threat to freedom of speech and religious liberty. With a stroke of Gov. Polis’ pen, the state effectively outlawed distinctive Christian and conservative ethics in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Please join CWA as we pray and fight for Christians in Colorado living under HB25-1312 and for those challenging this unconstitutional law.