Supreme Court suggests Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy is headed for the dustbin of history – RedState
A clear majority of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared inclined to overturn a Colorado law that prevents doctors or other medical professionals from practicing conversion therapy. At issue is not only Colorado’s law on minor conversion therapy, but also the left’s dogma that sexual deviance is an immutable characteristic.
In 2019, Colorado adopted the MCTL, which has been endorsed by the panoply of professional medical organizations. The law prevents doctors or licensed therapists from engaging in conversion therapy with a patient under 18 years old. Oddly enough, if you’re not a licensed therapist or involved in (lol) “gender-affirming care” then you’re fine. The plaintiff, Kaley Chiles, is a licensed therapist described in court documents as “a practicing Christian.” Chiles believes that people flourish when they live according to God’s design, including their biological sex.
The real goal of the law is to prevent gay and confused young people from seeking advice on how to harmonize their gender with their sexual desires and self-image. If a teenager thinks he’s a girl, a licensed therapist can come to terms with this madness. The moment you suggest that the child is not a girl, you put yourself at professional and legal risk. There is no reason for this except that the government promotes sexual deviance over normality. Because therapists practicing conversion therapy generally do not ambush their clients, the law had the effect of preventing people under 18 who felt homosexual or transgender urges from seeking help to combat them.
Along with the Alliance Defending Freedom, Chiles filed the lawsuit, claiming the law is a clear example of viewpoint discrimination.
The Chilis lost at the district court level. The court decided she had been wronged by the law, but needed to get her act together and move on. According to the judge, Chiles’ speech was not really a speech but professional conduct. A three-judge panel from the Tenth Circuit (appointed by Biden, Obama, and George W. Bush) upheld the lower court’s decision. “The MCTL does not prohibit a mental health professional from discussing what conversion therapy is, their views on conversion therapy, or who can legally provide this treatment to their minor clients,” the Tenth Circuit majority ruled. “It only prohibits a mental health professional from engaging in this practice himself. We therefore conclude, as the district court did, that the MCTL is a regulation of professional conduct incidentally involving speech.”
Colorado didn’t have a great day. Chiles was supported by the deputy U.S. attorney general, indicating that the White House believes the case is important. Justice Alito called the law “like blatant discrimination in terms of viewpoints.” As Judge Jackson took notes for her 473-page dissent and Wide Latina attempted to direct the court on the issue of Chiles’ standing, although the district court and the Tenth Circuit concluded that it existed and was not the subject of today’s argument (that a law that censors certain conversations between counselors and their clients based on the views expressed regulates the conduct or violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment), Justice Kagan led the final decision. nail it in the coffin of MCTL. Referring to a doctor’s ability to accept a patient’s sexual dysfunction without consequences, and the punishment faced by a colleague trying to treat the illness
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan appeared to express skepticism about the Colorado law, posing a hypothetical in which two doctors acknowledge that a patient identifies as gay. One offers to help the patient accept this, while the other offers to help the patient change.
“And one of these [doctors’ responses] one is permissible and the other is not,” Kagan said. “It looks like viewpoint discrimination in the way we would normally understand viewpoint discrimination.”
Thirty other states have laws similar to Colorado’s, so a victory here will have a major downstream effect on the left’s ability, via its capture of professional organizations, to control the debate over preparing children for homosexuality or transgenderism.
They thought they would win:
The desire to ban such practices for homosexual minors was motivated by the growing conviction that Sexual orientation is so central to a person’s identity that no one should be asked to change it, the researchers said. In 1977, according to a Gallup poll, a majority of American adults believed that being gay or lesbian was due to their upbringing and environment, while 13 percent believed it was due to birth. By 2012, the percentage of people believing that sexual orientation is determined at birth had increased to 40%, reaching a majority in 2015, the year the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage a national right.
But they see victory slipping away from them.
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