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“A majority of Supreme Court justices on Tuesday seemed likely to side with a Christian counselor challenging bans on LGBTQ+ ‘conversion therapy’ for kids as a violation of her First Amendment rights. Kaley Chiles, with support from President Donald Trump’s administration, argues the laws passed by about half of U.S. states wrongly bar her from offering voluntary, faith-based therapy for kids. She’s challenging the law in Colorado. The state says its measure simply regulates licensed therapists by barring a practice that’s been scientifically discredited and linked to serious harm…
“Chiles contends her approach is different from the kind of conversion therapy once associated with practices like shock therapy decades ago. She said she believes ‘people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex.’’ AP News
The left urges the Court to uphold the law, arguing that it protects minors from harmful treatments.
“The science on conversion therapy is unambiguous: it’s both ineffective and dangerous. All the way back in 2009, an American Psychological Association task force issued a landmark report documenting the lack of evidence behind sexual orientation ‘change efforts,’ as scientists refer to them…
“More recently, 28 major medical and psychological associations signed a joint statement condemning conversion therapy and pledging to eliminate it. ‘Decades of research findings and clinical expertise have revealed that variations in sexual orientation and gender identity are a normal part of human development across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status,’ they wrote.”
Henry Carnell and Madison Pauly, Mother Jones
“Licensed medical professionals should be given a wide berth to talk about whatever they want to talk about with their patients. And we broadly accept the notion that religious adherents should be allowed to program their kids according to their beliefs…
“But parents, religious or otherwise, don’t have a First Amendment right to beat their kids as much as they deem necessary. Therapists don’t have a religious right to administer medically dubious shock treatments, or shove bamboo sticks under kids’ fingernails until they promise to not be gay. If you understand conversion therapy as a similar form of abuse, you understand that people shouldn’t have a constitutional right to do it.”
Elie Mystal, The Nation
“As even some of the Republican justices conceded, state malpractice laws have long punished licensed professionals who do not meet the standard of care within their profession. And this rule in malpractice cases is widespread for a very good reason. Even if experts aren’t right 100 percent of the time, they are correct far more often than they are wrong. And they are far more likely to be correct than lay people…
“This Supreme Court is often sloppy when it hands down decisions that pit the religious right against LGBTQ Americans… Bans on conversion therapy were almost certainly doomed the moment this Supreme Court took an interest in this case. But now, the most important question is whether the Court will concede that medical expertise has some role to play in regulating speech between health providers and patients.”
Ian Millhiser, Vox
The right urges the Court to strike down the law, arguing that it violates the First Amendment.
The right urges the Court to strike down the law, arguing that it violates the First Amendment.
“Colorado’s 2019 law — versions of which have been passed by over 20 other states — prohibits mental health professionals from providing any counseling that doesn’t ‘affirm’ a minor’s stated ‘gender identity.’ In practice, this means therapists can only validate a child’s desire to pursue sex change interventions, whether social, medical, or surgical; they cannot explore underlying issues, address co-occurring mental health conditions, or help children find ways to understand themselves that don’t include medically or surgically modifying their developing bodies…
“Helping children work through distress about puberty — a universally difficult time — bears no resemblance to the coercive practices many gay and lesbian adults condemn. This law isn’t protecting children from harmful therapies. It’s guiding them onto a medical conveyor belt that itself exposes them to serious risks of fundamentally experimental interventions that carry serious risks.”
Ryan Anderson and Tyler Deaton, Washington Examiner
“The law allows counselors to use therapy to encourage minors toward a different gender identity – it just doesn’t want professionals like Chiles to advocate for comfort with one’s birth sex… When it comes to issues they advocate, like abortion rights, progressives like to say the issue is between patients and their doctors. That doesn’t carry over to practices that liberal states like Colorado deem counter to their leftist ideology.”
Ingrid Jacques, USA Today
“Kaley works only with clients who want her help. In fact, many clients who seek Kaley’s help come to her because of shared values. But Colorado’s law makes no exception for clients who want a conversation with a counselor to help them realign their identity with their sex. The state assumes it knows best what kinds of views counselors and their clients can discuss — even when children and their families disagree…
“Government has no business silencing desired conversations on matters of moral and spiritual significance… Studies show that roughly 90 percent of children who struggle with these gender issues before puberty will regain comfort with their sex over time. But Colorado’s law encourages these children down a rushed and unproven path of gender transition.”
Jim Campbell, National Review
