Colorado is a solidly blue state with protections for trans people on the books. When a hospital stopped providing gender-affirming care to trans youth because of policies from the Trump administration, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that it had to resume care (the hospital is now being sued over its claim that the doctors are refusing to provide the care). And yet, on Tuesday, trans rights might be decided by voters through ballot initiatives.
Voters in the Centennial State will be faced with Propositions 134 and 135. A “yes” vote on Prop 134 supports defining student athletes’ gender by their “biological reproductive systems” and forcing them to only compete on teams that align with that gender. A “yes” on Prop 135 supports a ban on gender-affirming surgeries for trans minors: a rare situation that is limited to top surgery anyway. A carveout in the proposition allows cis people to still receive the same care denied to trans people.
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Colorado state Rep. Brianna Titone (D) spoke to LGBTQ Nation about why these policies are being pushed as ballot initiatives, what it would mean if they passed, and how the legislature has been harassed by a hateful and vocal minority.
Why ballot initiatives?
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There are 27 states that have banned gender-affirming surgeries for trans youth, and 29 that have laws or regulations banning trans youth from participating in sports in line with their gender identity. Those policies all went through legislatures, so why is Colorado using ballot initiatives instead?
“The main difference between the states that have done it and the states that haven’t are who’s in charge of those states: Colorado is Democratically controlled,” Titone explained. “So whenever these policies are proposed legislatively, they fail because we won’t allow that kind of thing to happen. The thing with ballot initiatives is that the bar is fairly low to get some of these initiatives on the ballot, and these had money behind them, which meant they had a lot of resources to gather the required signatures.”
Titone is particularly frustrated by these ballot initiatives as they’re not only trying to strip rights from trans people, but she says they are also attempting to legislate policies that have always been left to specialized organizations.
“When it comes to gender-affirming care, the doctors should be the people we listen to,” Titone said. She went on to contrast the official reports and guidelines that have been put out by major medical associations with the “evidence” that is being used to support Proposition 135: “What do they come up with? Reports that don’t have even the right kind of references or reference themselves, and all of these kinds of nonsense reports that are written by biased people who have an agenda.”
She sees a similar problem with Prop 134’s claim to be about fairness in sports. While studies suggest that trans people do not have an advantage in sports, and school sports has historically been more about developing team skills than winning, “fairness” is the buzzword.
“The policies are [normally] done at the level of the school district, or the college, or the Olympics, and all of these different entities have all of these positions in place to say what is good and what is not good for fairness. That is already there. And the only reason why they’ve gone back on all of this is because of the immense amount of pressure that’s been put on them by wealthy, powerful people who are threatening, and they’ve caved to it.”
Could Props 134 and 135 pass in Colorado?
While the legislature might not be in favor of these policies, ballot initiatives can pass in unexpected places (and can serve as “ballot candy” to increase turnout for other races). It’s not unusual for a voter not to learn about a proposition until they’re in the booth on Election Day and must decide based only on the wording presented. Additionally, organizations and activists can fearmonger around an initiative more easily without the failsafe of a politician who can do further research before voting in the legislature.
While Titone thinks that voters will reject Prop 135, the gender-affirming care ban, she sees the “fairness” argument as being too easy for people to buy into. Indeed, several Democrats have fallen into the trap of questioning the fairness of trans inclusion in sports.
“I think it’s going to be pretty close,” Titone warned. “I’ve had some conversations with people who have always been really supportive of trans people, and when I asked them about the sports issue, they said, ‘well, that’s one issue that I think is about fairness.’”
But while Titone knows Prop 134, the sports ban, would be awful for trans kids, she thinks people don’t realize how much it will impact other people as well. “I think that it’s really going to affect more cisgender girls, because they’re going to be picking on anybody in school, because they think they’re trans…There’s not that many trans kids playing sports.”
Additionally, Titone worries about the impact these ballot initiatives could have outside Colorado if either passes in the blue state. “We really fear that if this passes here, it opens the door to a lot of other states to pass these things as well. And that’s where we really get into the dominoes falling, so it’s so important that we defeat these here.”
If these were bills in the legislature, the Democratic trifecta in Colorado would easily kill both. Titone believes that even a few Republicans would be receptive to arguments for rejecting them. “I know some of the Republicans may even have a niece and nephew or grandkid who is trans. And I really tried to appeal to them at times to say, ‘when your grandkid becomes a certain age and realizes that you voted for this sort of thing, what do you think they’re going to say to you?’”
The hateful voices pushing Props 134 and 135
Both Props 134 and 135 were spearheaded by conservative activists Erin Lee and Michele Austin. However, Prop 134 started life as Initiative 70, which Austin represented alongside gay MAGA activist Rich Guggenheim.
Guggenheim has made a name for himself as a virulently anti-trans activist in the state, pushing anti-trans talking points for years and accusing anyone who disagrees with him of homophobia and misogyny.
Titone showed LGBTQ Nation numerous emails that Guggenheim has sent to her, the media outlet Westword, and the rest of the Colorado legislature. In one long email, Guggenheim included a revisionist history of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement, in which he deadnames and misgenders Stonewall veterans Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. He then goes on to push the harmful lie that there is a connection between trans identities and pedophilia, much like how anti-gay activists in the past – and even some today – do to attack gay men.
In one recent email, pushing support for the ban on gender-affirming care for minors while using a wealth of slurs, he included several graphic photos of trans masculine bottom surgery recovery. “I really find it ironic that the only time they really bring up trans men is when they show those kinds of surgical pictures,” Titone mused. “Because those bring a little bit more of a shock value. Nobody gets any of those surgeries before they’re 18 anyway.”
In recent years, Guggenheim has made a career out of anti-trans rants and attacking trans rights. From 2023 to 2025, he served as the legislative director for Gays Against Groomers (GAG), an anti-trans organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center says “amplifies dehumanizing anti-trans rhetoric” and “perpetuates anti-LGBTQ+ stereotypes.” He remains a member of the Colorado chapter of GAG.
Erin Lee has also been happy to associate herself with people who promote violence against the LGBTQ+ community. She heads the group Protect Kids Colorado, and went on Joe Oltmann’s podcast to defend the anti-trans propositions, which she referred to as “forcing the change of law on these school districts.” Oltmann has repeatedly threatened and doxxed people, advocated for Democrats to be hanged for treason, pushed conspiracy theories about children being recruited to be gay, and called for violence against LGBTQ+ teachers.
Propositions supported by a vocal minority
While figures like Guggenheim, Lee, and Austin have pushed these propositions, Titone notes she hasn’t seen much support for them in public spaces and no local yard sign campaign. Most of the support for the propositions, as well as much of the hate against Titone and her colleagues, seems to be happening in digital spaces, raising the question of how many of the people pushing the propositions online actually live in Colorado or even the United States, and whether the accounts represent real people at all.
The identifiable figures behind the hate are tied to groups like GAG and the right-wing anti-trans account Libs of TikTok. However, these groups and their insistence that “LGB” should be separated from the “TQ+” are more and more clearly a vocal minority.
According to a Ballotpedia analysis of data from Colorado Tracer, a database operated by the office of the Colorado Secretary of State, the campaign to vote no on Props 134 and 135 has outraised the campaign to vote yes on them by a 20-1 margin. A Pew Research Center report found that the overwhelming majority of LGBTQ+ people surveyed in the US support protections for trans rights, contrary to anti-trans claims. While people like Guggenheim are loud in their opinions, they don’t represent that majority of LGBTQ+ people, or the wider population. So if the initiatives they’re pushing pass, it shows just how far misinformation and fearmongering can go.
Titone and her allies have worked hard to spread the truth behind the propositions and educate people on the facts. She points to their own yard sign campaign, the people doing social media videos to oppose the propositions, and a recent opinion piece by a Colorado parent of a trans child.
Titone got particular traction with a video that she made with Iris Halpern (who is running for the Colorado House of Representatives) and Melat Kiros (who is running for a seat in Congress and could become the first female Gen Z member of Congress). That video was attacked by the Libs of TikTok account, and parodied by anti-trans supporters of the propositions. Titone sees that as evidence of its effectiveness: “I think that the video the three of us made struck a chord.”
“So we’re trying all different avenues to try to educate people about why this is a bad thing,” Titone continues. “We’re doing a lot of door-knocking. We’re doing a lot of calling. We’re not going to give up until the very end where we have all the votes counted.”
Titone on anti-trans Democrats
While it hasn’t directly affected Colorado, on the national stage, a major issue in the midterms is how some Democrats have been testing out anti-trans messaging in response to Republican attacks. That can leave a lot of trans people unhappy about supporting the Democrat in their state.
“It’s a tough thing because we know that the Republican candidate will be light-years worse than the Democrat,” Titone says. “My hope is that we can educate and reason with the Democrat a little bit easier than a Republican. It is important that we elect all the Democrats that we can, and in the future, we need to make sure we’re running primary candidates against these folks that are going to stand strong on all of the issues.”
Titone is keen to make it clear that these Democrats are on the wrong side of history and are risking trans rights for no good reason. “It’s very disappointing because we’ve seen people stand up against trans issues in other states and win their election. I mean, look at Kentucky. Andy Beshear was unapologetic about it, and he won in Kentucky.”
“We can’t capitulate,” Titone says. “Someone was challenging me about 134, 135 and saying, ‘Well, if this isn’t the answer, then what is the answer?’ And I said, ‘What problem are we trying to solve?’ What they’re proposing is a problem to be solved, but show me the problem that needs to be solved.”
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