A newly introduced bill at the Colorado State Capitol would allow LGBTQ individuals to sue for damages caused by so-called conversion therapy, or therapy aimed at changing the sexual orientation or gender identity of a person.
The practice was banned in Colorado in 2019, and the American Medical Association – among other medical and mental health organizations – has said it is ineffective and can lead to depression, anxiety, and other psychological injuries.
DENVER, CO – JANUARY 14: Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie in front of the House Gallery starts the 2026 legislative session at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver, Colorado on January 14, 2026.RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Sponsors of HB26-1322 say many of those harmed by the therapy don’t come forward for years. Their bill would eliminate the statute of limitations in cases involving conversion therapy.
Individuals could sue their therapists, facilities that hired the therapists, and anyone who knew or should have known about the therapy and didn’t take reasonable steps to stop it.
Plaintiffs could recover economic and punitive damages if they could prove that the therapy was a substantial factor in their psychological injuries.
The bill is sponsored by State Representatives Alex Valdez and Karen McCormick in the House and State Senators Lisa Cutter and Kyle Mullica in the Senate.
The House Judiciary Committee will hear the bill this Wednesday.
Now and then, I post here from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. I read there every day; it’s a good way to begin the day online, for me. Anyway, today, there is a link, Jigsaw Galaxy: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day So, being curious, I clicked it, and it’s pretty neat. If you like to do jigsaws, take a look!
This week I’ve been struggling a little with the fact that I can’t do all of the things that I want to. My book comes out next week (you’re in it!) and I feel so excited and lucky but also terrified and filled with dread. I worry people won’t like it…that no one will show up to the book tour…that I’m failing my publisher because I can’t do some of the things that most authors would jump at because I just don’t have the energy or mental strength to say yes to everything without making myself sick. I even felt a little bad about drawing this week when I probably should be doing author stuff.
But then I reminded myself that I need this quiet drawing time (is it considered “quiet” when I’m doing it while binging Dexter? I say yes.) to keep myself sane and to replenish my energy and to remind myself that I am more than just my work, and that it’s okay to not work yourself to exhaustion even if it’s for something you love.
I suspect we all struggle with this. Perhaps as parents or partners or in our career…the urge to try to be more than our bodies and minds allow, but not being able to because you are…human. It’s so easy to put ourselves last when it’s for something else that you care about.
“There is a fine line between beautiful and suffocating. Don’t forget to leave room for yourself.”
So this is a reminder from me to you to make time for yourself if you can. To rest. To create. To refill your cup. There is so much beauty in what we do for others, for our work and for our passions…but there is also a necessary beauty in what we do for ourselves…a beauty we often forget.
Sending love (and quiet moments of calm repose even when watching serial killer shows)
This morning I was in New York filming the Today Show where I managed to talk about explosive diarrhea, fears of my foot falling off, apologized for using my hands too much, sat on them, promptly pulled my hands back out bc I can’t talk without them and then made all the anchors put pencils in their mouths…all within about 4 minutes. By this afternoon I was in Amish country in Pennsylvania where I met some very nice “fancy Amish” people (this is a real thing) and did not pet a horse even though I really wanted to. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be in Lancaster for my first tour stop and signing even though technically my book doesn’t officially come out until Tuesday. Then it’s back to NYC, and then a stop in New Hampshire for another reading and signing and then I get to go home for a week to rest for the next round. I’m feeling tired, happy, lucky, scared, excited, embarrassed…all of the things. Oh, and did I mention my first book got banned from a Texas high school after a senate bill deemed it obscene and profane? It’s been a busy week. I would link to everything but I can’t figure out how to do this with my phone
I should have written all this before I left but i was overwhelmed with packing all the wrong things and so instead I’m writing this tonight, on the eve of my first new book event in over half a decade, to distract myself from the fear and from the incredibly loud but very happy drunken wedding taking place two rooms down from mine. It feels like you’re here, in a weird way. I know that’s strange, but it’s comforting.
I’ve drawn in planes and cars and green rooms to keep my hands and mind busy but it’s a jerky mess so instead I’m sharing a drawing from my new book, because it seems fitting while I’m traveling so much in spite of the fact that I never know where I am. It’s an adventure, after all, if I look at it with the right kind of eyes.
Project 2025 was very clear. The goal is to remove all representation of LGBTQ+ people from society. Pride flags are determined to be political incitement and agitation; media representation and books with even an LGBTQ+ character are called sexualizing children while the same with straight kids is not, and letting a child express how they deeply feel inside by letting them change their hairstyle and clothing is called child abuse while doing the discredited / harmful conversion therapy to force a person of any age to be straight and cis is considered to be healthy for the child. Lies are spread constantly about puberty blockers by people who misrepresent what these medical studies show or only claim in fake medical studies that have no peer reviewed status by medical personnel in that field of study. The goal is to do what Russia, Hungary, and several other highly religious authoritarian countries have done, which is to wipe the existence of anything not straight and not cis from being. I don’t know if this is due to their being highly religious and wanting to force everyone in the country to live by their church doctrines or if they just are straight / cis so they don’t think if they don’t feel it that it can’t be true. I ran into that decades ago as a gay man with straight people claiming everyone was straight because they were and that was normal, but some people choose to be weird deviants and have bad types of sex. But if you ask them when they chose to be straight they think it is a stupid question as they never chose; they just were. Clips below. Hugs
“They go in the bathroom they’re supposed to, they upset people. If they go in the one that they now look like, they’re breaking the law, which could include pretty severe penalties” Guthrie told senators. “ … We seem to be really focused on this space and ignoring the fact that there are people that are just like us, human beings, just like us. What are they supposed to do?”
‘Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked?’ trans man testifies
The bill builds on a wave of anti-LGTBQ+ bills that the Legislature and the governor have approved in recent years.
“Over the last several years, legislators have gone from refusing to protect us to actively targeting us,” Nikson Mathews, who serves as chair of the Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus, said at a news conference in February.
“Every single day when I’m out in public, I have to decide: Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked,” Mathews told lawmakers.
A bathroom sign as seen on March 16, 2026, at the State Capitol Building in Boise. (Photo by Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
The Idaho Legislature widely approved a bill that would criminalize “willfully” entering public and government bathrooms and changing rooms designated for another sex.
The bill — which heads to Gov. Brad Little for final consideration — would effectively block transgender people from using their preferred public bathrooms in Idaho, expanding on the state’s transgender bathroom ban in public schools.
House Bill 752 would create criminal misdemeanor and felony charges for people who “knowingly and willfully” enter a bathroom or changing room designated for the opposite sex, with some exceptions. The bill would apply in government-owned buildings and places of public accommodations, like private businesses.
A first offense would carry a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison. A second offense within five years would be a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Only three states — Utah, Florida and Kansas — have criminal bans on trans people using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates — Idaho called the bill “the most extreme anti-transgender bathroom ban in the nation.”
One Republican opposed the bill in the Senate
In the Idaho Senate, the bill passed on a near-party line 28-7 vote Friday, with all six Democrats opposing. One Republican, Sen. Jim Guthrie, from McCammon, broke with Republicans support of the bill.
He called legislation like it “harmful.”
“They go in the bathroom they’re supposed to, they upset people. If they go in the one that they now look like, they’re breaking the law, which could include pretty severe penalties” Guthrie told senators. “ … We seem to be really focused on this space and ignoring the fact that there are people that are just like us, human beings, just like us. What are they supposed to do?”
Idaho Sen. Ben Toews, R-Coeur d’Alene, walks through the halls at the State Capitol building on Jan. 9, 2023. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)
Bill sponsor Sen. Ben Toews, R-Coeur d’Alene, told senators that the bill protects “common sense realities.”
“The Legislature has a fundamental duty to protect the bodily privacy and safety of Idaho citizens,” Toews said. “House Bill 752 provides a clear, proactive tool to secure sex-separated private spaces in our state, while accommodating common-sense realities.”
Once the bill is transmitted to Little, he has five days to decide on it. He has three options: sign it into law, veto it, or allow it to become law without his signature.
In the House, the bill passed on a 54-15 vote earlier this month, with six Republicans joining the House’s nine Democrats in opposition.
‘Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked?’ trans man testifies
The bill builds on a wave of anti-LGTBQ+ bills that the Legislature and the governor have approved in recent years.
And for more than a decade, efforts to add anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people to state law have failed.
“Over the last several years, legislators have gone from refusing to protect us to actively targeting us,” Nikson Mathews, who serves as chair of the Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus, said at a news conference in February.
Mathews, a trans man with a beard, told a House committee earlier this year that the bathroom bill would force him to use the women’s restroom.
“Every single day when I’m out in public, I have to decide: Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked,” Mathews told lawmakers.
A 2025 study by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute found “no evidence of increased harms to people who are not transgender when transgender people are allowed to use restrooms and other gendered facilities according to their identity.” But when trans people are refused access to facilities that align with their gender, the study found that trans people report verbal harassment and physical assault.
Bill is about discrimination, Democratic senator says
Sen. Ron Taylor, a Democrat from Hailey, said the bill is about discrimination. He said constituents told him that they’d move out of Idaho if it passed — because it would throw their transgender children in jail.
Idaho state Sen. Ron Taylor, D-Hailey, enters the House of Representatives chamber for the governor’s State of the State Address on Jan. 12, 2026, at the State Capitol in Boise. (Photo by Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
“Now maybe that’s what some of us want, is to chase a population that’s marginalized out of Idaho,” Taylor said. “But that’s not Idaho. Idaho was founded by a population that was marginalized.”
Sen. Brian Lenney, a Republican from Nampa, said the bill is about keeping women and girls safe from having men in their spaces.
“Trans women aren’t women,” said Sen. Joshua Kohl, a Republican from Twin Falls. “They’re men. And they need to be treated as such.”
Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle, listens to proceedings during the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee meeting on Jan. 13, 2026, at the State Capitol Building in Boise. (Photo by Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
Sen. Jim Woodward, a Republican from Sagle in North Idaho, said the bill is largely borne out of an event where he said a man was found in a women’s locker room in a YMCA in Sandpoint. He said he’d vote for the bill, but he had some reservations.
“What comes next and how much further do we venture inside of a private building?” Woodward said. “I don’t support the punitive measures in this bill, but the policy does reflect the sentiment of my community, and so for that reason, I will support it. It is the best for the most.”
Sen. Melissa Wintrow, a Boise Democrat, said she saw people crying after a recent committee hearing on the bill.
“They were crying because they just didn’t feel as if they were human. That a simple little thing they had to do, like go to the bathroom, would have to be in a law,” Wintrow said.
Idaho Fraternal Order of Police opposed the bill
The bill was opposed by some law enforcement groups and several transgender Idahoans.
The bill outlines several exceptions, including to give medical assistance, law enforcement assistance, and if someone “is in dire need of urinating or defecating and such facility is the only facility reasonably available at the time of the person’s use.”
The Idaho Fraternal Order of Police flagged that exception as concerning.
“Officers responding to a complaint would be placed in the difficult position of determining an individual’s biological sex in order to enforce the statute,” Idaho Fraternal Order of Police President Bryan Lovell wrote. “In many circumstances, there is no clear or reasonable way for officers to make that determination without engaging in questioning or investigative actions that could be viewed as invasive and inappropriate.”
Kyle Pfannenstiel
Kyle Pfannenstiel is a reporter for the Idaho Capital Sun, covering health care and state politics. He previously reported for the Post Register/Report for America, Idaho Education News and the Idaho Press. Kyle is a military brat who calls Idaho home. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science from University of Idaho.
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Well, I’m dying soon. I’ve got a cough, runny nose, bit of a head-ache. It’s over for me.
I’m devastated, destroyed! I can’t do housework like this, I might sneeze! You women won’t understand.
In all seriousness, perhaps men do complain about not feeling well far more than women do. But, see – it’s how we look at the world. For a man, not feeling well is a direct evidence of something being broken, something we have no way to fix and can hope only that someone else can fix the problem – or at best suffer until we are back under warranty. Women, on the other hand, do look upon illness as a direct evidence of something broken, and they very much do complain about it – do not let the meme lie to you. But the real difference is that women are very familiar with dealing with broken things, things that shouldn’t be, and they just go on with their day mainly because the man in her life hasn’t fixed that thing that’s broken yet.
Hugs Everyone! – I mean, you know, from across the room. You don’t want this cold….
It has been a joy to deconstruct my religious trauma alongside 32-year-old comedian Taylor Tomlinson. Four years ago, as I was coming out as queer to my family, I found her Netflix special Taylor Tomlinson: Look at You to be a warm welcome into the community of formerly Christian queer kids and purity culture survivors. Dark humor gave all of us a silly sort of grace, a space where we could grieve and grow.
Tomlinson, who was raised in a conservative Christian household in Temecula, Calif., got her start in stand-up through the church comedy circuit. But as she grew up, she began deconstructing how her conservative Christian upbringing was hurting her mental health and sexual development, deciding instead to be a “secular” comic.
Her new Netflix special Prodigal Daughter was filmed inside Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., which welcomed her not despite but rather because of her comedy. On her aptly named “Save Me” tour, Tomlinson builds on a foundation of jokes about toxic Christian culture to call out not just people who weaponize religion as a tool for bigotry but also the people who make fun of those who still believe in God.
“Because if God does exist, he does not exist to make you feel better than other people. He exists to make you better for other people,” she said. “We judge each other’s coping mechanisms. Like, ‘You’re a quitter if you get on antidepressants. You’re stupid if you believe in God. B—-, I’m on mood stabilizers, you’re on Jesus. We’re all trying to get to ‘dead with Daddy.’”
In fact, Tomlinson recognizes the people in her life—her grandparents, aunt, and uncle, himself a pastor—“who are using religion correctly.”
“There are a lot of people who are using religion as a tool for community and connection and compassion and comfort,” she says, “and when I was writing this hour, I was thinking about those people.”
Cheekily, Tomlinson compares her own stand-up specials to her uncle’s Christian services. “We’re both out here on the weekends, changing lives.”
But the comedian is not here to absolve all the sins of Christianity or its effects on her.
“When you grow up in a religious environment, you spend a lot of your young adulthood untangling who you are from who they wanted you to be,” she says. For Tomlinson, this is best represented by her “late” coming out at age 30.
Tomlinson explains that she has so many queer friends who are open and free about their sexualities—the “Samanthas” of the group—but she didn’t see anyone else who, like her, was nervous entering the queer dating scene. “We need more gay prude representation,” she chuckles, making those of us coming out at an older age and experiencing a real queer second adolescence feel less alone.
A second adolescence refers to how many LGBTQ+ people didn’t have the chance to experience the joys of teenage years. Because of rampant queerphobia inside and outside religious communities, we didn’t have access to the romantic and sexual “firsts”—first crush, first kiss, first sexual encounter—that many heterosexual people did because we were told repeatedly that our love and our bodies were shameful and had to be hidden.
While she doesn’t explicitly name “second adolescence,” the significance of coming-of-age as a queer person runs throughout her special.
According to Adam James Cohen, a therapist specializing in helping LGBTQ+ patients, adolescence is critical to developing and cementing a person’s identity and sense of self. For those who missed out on that true identity formation earlier in life, second adolescence offers a mental and physical stage of healing and liberation, often involving people deconstructing their internalized anti-queerness and religious trauma. Sometimes this liberation happens through comedy, sometimes through therapy, or as Tomlinson discusses in her special, sometimes both. During this formational time, adults reckon with the grief of missing adolescence, and make up for lost time.
Second adolescence isn’t just a uniquely queer experience. Many people raised in far-right Chrisitan environments experience a new phase of psychosocial development after they leave their conservative Christian homes. For people raised in purity culture, their second adolescence can be a time of sexual exploration, experimentation, and liberation during and after deconstructing harmful theologies of the body.
For the queer Christian kids like Tomlinson, we were robbed of moments of bodily and social experimentation and generation, so experiencing our second adolescence is like coming home to our bodies, an emotional rebirth or reversion, to put it in Christian terms, of learning and loving to be a queer child and queer teenager again. For trans and nonbinary people undergoing gender affirming medical care, second adolescence can be even more physical, as hormone therapy brings about a second puberty.
And for many of us, this second adolescence is characterized by an eagerness—and joy—to accept and share the possibilities that many never questioned. As Tomlinson joked, “When I started dating women, it was the closest I’d come to feeling religious in a long time because my friend would complain about their boyfriends and husbands and I was like, ‘Have you heard the good news? You don’t have to live like this. There’s a better way.’”
Second adolescence is especially common among people who have a later-in-life realization or acceptance of their LGBTQ+ identity, often called a “queer awakening” or “second coming out,” just like Tomlinson. There is no time limit on coming out or discovering and affirming gender or sexuality, but as Tomlinson jokes in her special, “coming out as bisexual at 30 feels like saying to a waiter, ‘By the way, it’s my birthday.’ They’re like, ‘Cool, sing to yourself. You’re a grown woman.’”
Tomlinson’s special portrays this second adolescence with a humor, grace, and visibility I hadn’t encountered before but am deeply indebted to. Prodigal Daughter, and her comedy as a whole, carries special poignancy for the formerly queer Christian kids coming of age through humor and deconstruction.
On Monday March 23 I had an epidural in my back. On Tuesday I had to have my blood work done for some upcoming doctor’s appointments. Ron and I went over the results and they don’t look good. They look worse on the computer screen than what came out in print because the print did not have all the colors and marks. But I looked up some of the results. One said it could be an indicator of anemia, which I have had in the past bad enough to put me in the hospital. The other suggestion from looking up the fact that all this dealt with my red and white blood cells was leukemia or kidney disease, and more likely autoimmune issues. I have all the symptoms of lupus, and my immune system has long been compromised. So that is a possiblity. My PSA is elevated and my TSH keeps dipping low. That is my thyroid which means is it going hyperactive. My first endocrinologist said that the thyroid reacts to things happening in the body so it could be dropping due to my other results. Medicare kicked back three tests because of changed codes / incorrct codes / or too early. The tests were PSA, A1C, and lipid panel. The lab wanted over $400 for the tests. I declined to pay for it. Here are the printed labs from the website and then scanned so I could include them. I deleted / covered the sensitive identifying information. Got to go get shots from the allergy clinic, they had to put me back on weekly for 5 weeks. Oh and I am salt wasting. No change it is actually the same from the last test and up from the low of 117. My kidneys don’t get the signal from my brain to stop taking salt out of my blood. At 115 you can start to have seizures. I am one of the few people told to eat as much salt as I can. Hugs
One thing that was not mentioned is the reason Cuba has such poverty is all the US sanctions over 60 years. When Obama lifted sanctions things got much better for Cuba. The Cuban government is not the problem and when there was less sanctions the people were happy with the government. We are the bad guys in this. We, the US government is refusing to let any other country send any supplies because we demand they have a capitalist oligarchy system of government mimicking the US one. How is that working out for us? Cuba has free universal medical. Free education. Do we? But that is the old guy mentality that every country should / must do and be as the US and profit must be king. All this reparation for what was nationalized? Why? US corporations and wealthy land owners were raping the land and hogging the profit and goods. They had a better system if left alone. But again the old red scare from the USSR days. Remember “better off dead than red”? The US must push democracy and oligarchy. Venezuela was the same thing, we did not like that they had a government for the people, a socialist / communist one and they nationalized the oil systems because the profits were not going to the Venezuelan people but to western corporations. Other countries have a right to their own resources. But remember tRump demanding that Ukraine give up half of its mineral rights to the US / tRump family? Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 