Far-left House candidate ripped for 'disgusting' vote on misgendering bill: 'Disqualifying'

Manny Rutinel voted to put pronoun usage into custody court proceedings. Not co-parenting schedules, not who's actually caring for the kid day to day. Whether a parent calls their child by the name on the birth certificate now counts as "coercive control." That's the bill he helped pass in Colorado, and now he wants to go to Congress.

Think about what that actually does to a family court judge. Instead of weighing who's a fit parent, who shows up, who provides stability, the law hands one side a cudgel. A mom who's slow to adjust to a new name, maybe out of confusion or grief rather than malice, can now be painted as abusive under state law. That's not protecting kids. That's arming one parent against the other in the messiest, most painful legal fights that exist.

Rutinel's defenders will say this is about safety for trans kids. Fine, argue that. But codifying language policing into custody law is a wildly blunt instrument for a genuinely sensitive problem, and it tells parents statewide that the state now has an opinion on what words you're allowed to use in your own house.

Voters get to decide if that's disqualifying. We think it's at least worth asking him to explain it out loud.