Family · Statewide · CO · August 11, 2026
Do No Harm Report Alleges Colorado Medical Pipeline Bypasses Sex-Based Care
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 11
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.”
The same report reaches the reader in two very different registers: news coverage summarizing it as a claim about a "publicly funded network," and commentary recasting it as a state-run "grooming and mutilation operation." The alert itself concedes that the methodology, named institutions and underlying records have not been independently verified — which is exactly the gap into which an overclaim falls. Push the negative that hard and the first factual correction discredits every accurate figure in the report along with it.
Counter-Rule 11 · Proportional Truth
Refuse to overclaim, even where it would help. One exaggeration hands the other side the only weapon that works permanently.
This month, say only what you can source: the report exists, it is titled "The Colorado 'Gender Affirming' Pipeline," it is published by an advocacy group, and it alleges a $4.7 million marketing contract. Refuse to use the words "grooming" or "mutilation" in a public meeting or a letter — they are unprovable in that room and they end the hearing. If someone asks you a detail you have not read in the report itself, say you have not read it yet.
Rule 1
“Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”
The persuasive force here is the word "pipeline" — the impression of one coordinated machine running from a state marketing contract through a medical school to a hospital clinic. The alert flatly says which hospitals, clinics and agencies are named is not yet confirmed, so at present the size of the thing is being supplied by the reader's imagination on both sides. Coverage also notes a dispute over how many minors were actually treated, with one figure said to be many times an earlier estimate — a question of counting, not of framing.
Counter-Rule 1 · Reality Over Perception
Count the actual numbers. The phantom army depends on nobody checking whether it exists.
Count. Ask the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing or the Behavioral Health Administration, in writing, for the I Matter marketing contract and its dollar value, and ask your own health system how many adolescent patients received the treatments at issue in the last reporting year. Write the numbers down with their source and date, and quote those instead of the adjective "network." A figure you can attribute survives cross-examination; an impression does not.
Rule 3
“Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
The ground of this fight is deliberately technical — insurance coding, NIH career-development awards, school-based health center referral channels, and three different Colorado consent ages for three different kinds of care. A parent who walks into an exam room with conviction alone will be answered with procedure, and the alert's own warning that this "requires direct confirmation" is an admission that the terrain is unfamiliar.
Counter-Rule 3 · Preparation and Width
Prepare the unfamiliar ground before you are dragged onto it. "I don't know, I'll find out and come back" beats an improvised answer.
Before your next appointment, read the two things that will actually be cited at you: C.R.S. 13-22-103 on minor consent to medical care, and the 2019 change allowing a minor 12 or older to obtain outpatient psychotherapy on their own consent. Bring one written question and ask for the policy number and revision date of the clinic's informed-consent document. If you are asked something you do not know, say "I don't know — I'll find out and come back," and then do.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
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