Colorado Could Be the Parental Rights Canary in the Coal Mine

Some may look at the pending Colorado legislation destroying parental rights and wrongly see the last gasps of a dying woke regime.   

The dystopian state house bill, HB 25-1312 or better known as the “Kelly Loving Act,” allows the Colorado government to remove a child from her parents if parents refuse to go along with her gender dysphoria and self-styled new identity. It represents the most totalitarian legal destruction of parental rights in American history. 

The bill passed the Colorado House and Senate. To understand why this destructive legislation might become Colorado law, we need to look closer at the cultural understructure. 

The most politically powerful defenders of children are married, biological parents. In 1970, married households with kids under age 18 made up 40 percent of all American households. Today, that number stands at just 17.8 percent of all households. 

Colorado sits on the front edge of the demographic cliff with K-12 schools already starting to shutter. According to the US Census, married households with kids in the state are just 81 percent of the national average at 14.4 percent of all households.   

So, this evil legislation makes some political sense. The less married parents with kids in any electorate district, the more vulnerable parents and kids are to the onslaught of state power. 

And given current trends in marriage and fertility rates – our future politics may look a lot more like Colorado’s politics than anyone realizes. This legal threat to parental rights will spread. 

Here’s what we know both from the data and common sense.  

A man not married to the mother of his child is less present in the day-to-day life of his child. Nearly all unmarried dads are nonresident dads who see their child less than once a week within two years of becoming a nonresident dad. A large portion of these men see their child only monthly or even less. These children don’t just lack the vital day-to-day influence that only a loving, present father can provide, they lose a powerful advocate and protector – particularly in politics.   

Assuming she hasn’t been captured by gender ideology herself, the financially struggling single mom often becomes a patronage client of the same legislator who is now taking away her parental rights. 

It’s a textbook example of divide and conquer.  

Here’s the reality. Marriage and fertility – either in its vibrance or absence – is a powerful political force in our nation’s politics. It often goes unnoticed by the politically conscious.  

Seeing fertility collapse in Roman antiquity, Octavian focused part of his rule on policy to boost fertility. He failed and Rome struggled to form native-born armies eventually falling to the Barbarians.  

The strength of early Rome’s family and fertility only rebounded through the evangelism of Christian missionaries and the revolutionary power of the Gospel’s teaching on marriage, which produced the greatness of the West. Reproducing such a revival is vital. 

Today, many parents and most church leaders are unaware of the hellscape and nihilism facing young people in sex and relationships.  

A recent study by Date Psychology found that nearly half of young men have never asked a woman out.   

The average age of first porn use in the United States is now 12. Choking in consensual sex has become terrifyingly common as porn becomes ubiquitous. The average age of first marriage for women is now far past peek fertility and moves ever closer to the age of the geriatric pregnancy. 

Many who lament the current state of play choose to focus all the attention on bashing men – as if society got here merely because of one sex. 

Our economy devasted the jobs where men inherently thrived. K-12 pedagogy became hyper feminized causing boys to conclude school was for girls resulting in women now outnumbering men in college admissions by a 50 percent margin.  

Popular media portrays women heroes as unconquerable while fathers are often portrayed as doofuses. Family law continues to skew against husbands.  

This is all to say there are plenty of contributing factors to our situation. But, what’s the solution?  

Unless one embraces a life of Pauline celibacy, we ought to first recognize the obvious: men and women need one another. We were made for each other, and this reality is designed into our very bodies.   

Adversarial approaches are unhelpful.  

Equal in dignity, men and women both deserve to be treated as an end in and of themselves and not treated as a means.   

We each must learn to live the radical biblical call of “being subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The paradox of Christian marriage is that a life of sacrificial love lived for the other is where health and happiness most reliably flow. 

So, an effective, long-term response to legislation like what is making its way into Colorado law, requires us to defend children by getting practical and tactical about renewing healthy marriage at the retail level. 

For churches, this means altering their ministry to proclaim the timeless truths of the Gospel into this moment.  

In all, 85 percent of American churches invest nothing, zero budget dollars, on marriage and relationship ministry. Instead, the local church should be a life-giving oasis providing the civilizational cure.  

Young people need to find within the church an “in real life” community where they can meet a partner outside of either the consumerism of dating apps or the didactics of a Bible study.  While living in a community of believers, they ought to also learn how to prioritize, date and discern a marriageable partner. They ought to hear about why the erectile dysfunction ads constantly run during live sports and be challenged to avoid the poison of pornography.  

The social science supporting marriage is overwhelmingly positive. Married people with children who attend church are among the happiest and healthiest in America. Contrary to popular media accounts, married church goers even report having sex more frequently than their secular peers.  

The church must embrace becoming the counterculture in a deeply practical way.

Effective political activism is vital to confront immediate threats.

But, increasing healthy marriages in the culture is necessary. It is the only path to defeating the radicals’ assault on children and parental rights. Otherwise, Colorado’s legislation will one day become national legislation. 

This article was originally published by RealClearReligion and made available via RealClearWire.