In the waning hours of the Colorado legislature this year, a mom who lives in Boulder testified in the House Judiciary Committee that her son “is constantly self-censoring, not because he is withholding hateful comments…but because he doesn’t share their ideology or life choices.” She went on to explain that at his public High School he is told to affirm and respect those who think they are animals or identify as a disabled person despite being perfectly healthy. Saying anything that borders on common sense could land her child in the principal’s office.

The trend across Colorado and the United States is to force the restructuring of our common language to accommodate a wayward ideology. The students at the University of Colorado Boulder claim on the university’s website that using proper English pronouns is an “act of violence”. They advise playing it safe and using they/them pronouns for everybody.

The absurdity of being forced to affirm a reality that twists the truth for someone’s delusions is pushing our children in particular into a world of grave cognitive dissonance and endangers the future of our unalienable right to free speech. The first amendment to the US Constitution is the expression of a person’s conscience. When a government forces their people to adhere to their prescribed religion, speech, or association, the inherent, God-given conscience of the people is exchanged for the government’s and they are no longer a free people.

A bill that passed this year in Colorado defines “harassment” for the K-12 public schools as “unwelcome” speech that is directed toward a student’s membership or perceived membership in a protected class. Even though religion is listed as a protected class, the state of Colorado, through its persecution of Jack Phillips and his cakeshop, has made it very clear that the Christian religion and its principles of morality are not to be tolerated. The Judeo-Christian ethics our country was founded on stand in stark contrast to the morality of the day and are incompatible with the Marxist agenda overtaking our country.

Even without this law, decent children are self-censoring themselves. When schools implement this new law that grants perks to any child who claims harassment or discrimination and reprimands those who attempt to speak truth, the morality of the state will become whatever the state determines it to be and we will have willingly given over our freedoms. All at the altar of accommodation and faux compassion. Knowledge and truth are the doorway to freedom. Schools used to be about grappling with what is true but these days they are about constructing a reality devoid of truth. Like the saying attributed to Klaus Schwab says “you’ll own nothing and be happy.” The first possession a person owns is their mind and they seek to own it.

“In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech; a thing terrible to public traitors.” Benjamin Franklin

Written by Carolyn Martin, Colorado Free Press Contributor