A bill on comprehensive sex-education curriculum in Colorado schools won preliminary approval from the state Senate Thursday — and without the anticipated fight from Senate Republicans.

That’s because House Bill 1032 was scaled back through a “strike-below” — an amendment that eliminates the original legislation and replaces it with a new one — and the bill went from 27 pages as introduced to 12.

HB 1032 will be up for a final vote on Friday and then goes back to the House for agreement on the amendments.

Sen. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, a sponsor of the measure, told the Senate that what was taken out were “areas of grave concern” to its opponents. That includes Colorado Christian University, according to Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert of Parker. 

The bill now focuses primarily on teaching about consent and healthy relationships, Todd said.

Under a 2013 sex-education law, public schools are not required to teach sex ed at all, but if they do, it must be comprehensive. Also, parents can also opt to keep their children out of sex-ed classes. The new bill leaves those provisions in effect.

One area of concern to opponents of the bill that was cut was a provision calling for teaching sex-ed students about “different relationship models … including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender peers.”

However, the 2013 law already required sex ed curriculum to be culturally sensitive and to include information that is “meaningful to the experiences and needs of communities of color; immigrant communities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities; people with physical or intellectual disabilities; people who have experienced sexual victimization; and others whose experiences have traditionally been left out of sexual health education, programs, and policies.” The new bill was amended Thursday to include those who are intersex to that list.

The Senate also added back in information on the state’s “safe haven” law, which allows a parent to relinquish custody of a newborn of less than 72 hours old to a firefighter or hospital personnel without criminal consequences.

The bill as amended also retains one of its most important provisions, closing the loophole on abstinence-only sex ed, which has been banned in state law since 2013. However, some school districts have found ways around that prohibition, including offering abstinence-only classes on nights or weekend by third parties and paid for with federal Title V grants. 

The amended bill includes the bill’s original language, which says that school districts and charter schools, including institute charter schools, “shall not” hire organizations or individuals that teach abstinence-only education using those Title V funds.

Democratic Rep. Susan Lontine of Denver, the bill’s House sponsor, said she worked on the amendments with the Senate sponsor and agrees with them.

Many of the objectionable elements of the bill have been removed, said Republican Sen. Paul Lundeen of Monument. He’s still uncomfortable about schools teaching sex ed rather than parents, he indicated, but his biggest concern — that the bill was a one-size-fits-all approach — has been addressed. That includes a requirement that charter schools can seek a waiver from teaching the curriculum. A similar waiver, available from the State Board of Education, already exists.

Holbert told Colorado Politics that state Sen. Don Coram, R-Montrose, another sponsor of the bill, negotiated the strike-below amendment with input from Sen. Jim Smallwood of Parker, who advocated for the safe-haven amendment.

“A lot of the folks outside the Capitol were very pleased with that strike-below,” Holbert said. “House Bill 1032 has passed in a significantly different form.”

But Holbert said that despite the changes, most of his caucus is likely to vote against it anyway in its final vote Friday.

He also noted that Senate Democrats agreed to drop a bill on exempting children from immunization, given the short amount of time left in the 2019 session. Both the sex ed bill and the immunization bill, House Bill 1312, were up for debate on Thursday, and the amount of time it would have required to debate them could have meant other priority bills would die on the calendar.

“That was an easy decision and I’m grateful. I don’t want to represent that those two are tied together but they happened at the same time,” Holbert “We appreciate the majority working with us.”

The immunization bill was killed immediately after the passage of House Bill 1032.

Any bill that doesn’t win preliminary approval Thursday in the House or Senate is dead at midnight.