The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up a Colorado case that addresses one of the most controversial of all debates about homosexuality and the church: Is so-called “conversion therapy” legitimate or abusive?
The largely discredited strategy of helping gay and lesbian people “pray away the gay” through practices that include inflicting pain and overdosing on pornography still has advocates — mainly within the evangelical church. Within the mental health community, conversion therapy has been dismissed for years as cruel and unproductive.
The largest national purveyor of this approach, Exodus International, shut down in 2013 and apologized for the harm it had done.
Kaley Chiles
Yet this week the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Chiles v. Salazar, in which a licensed mental health counselor challenges Colorado’s 2019 ban on conversion therapy on grounds the ban violates the free speech of licensed counselors like her.
The Colorado law prohibits licensed therapists from engaging in “any practice or treatment … that attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” but includes an exemption for counselors “engaged in the practice of religious ministry.”
There has been a direct pipeline from Colorado to the Supreme Court on cases important to conservative evangelicals as they seek to assert their religious liberty rights over and above anyone else’s rights not to be harmed by their beliefs. This has involved notorious cases from cake bakers and wedding photographers, for example. All the cases have to do with an abhorrence for same-sex attraction and relationships.
Kentucky bill decried
Meanwhile in Kentucky, lawmakers have introduced a bill (House Bill 495) that would shield conversion therapy practitioners from accountability and grant them legal protections.
A group of Kentucky Mental Health leaders recently wrote an op-ed in the Louisville Courier-Journal warning against the bill as “a blatant attempt to shield therapists who practice conversion therapy, a harmful and discredited practice.”
They explained: “Conversion therapy attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity and has been condemned by major medical associations. LGBTQ youth subjected to conversion therapy are at a higher risk of suicide and mental health issues.”
Disallowing conversion therapy should not be a partisan issue, the care providers wrote. “Even in our deeply divided times, there are moments when it is necessary to look beyond party lines to do what is right for the people that you were elected to serve. This is one of those moments.”
The “Conversion Therapy Revival Act” would allow licensed professionals “to reject best practices in favor of ideology — at the direct expense of their patients’ well-being,” the counselors wrote. “You don’t have to abandon your moral and religious convictions to agree that subjecting young people to psychological abuse is wrong.”
What is conversion therapy?
Conversion therapy, sometimes also called “reparative therapy,” refers to attempts to “convert” — or change or “repair” — an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. These practices include shaming, religious guilt and coercion, blaming sexuality differences on parents, administration of electric shocks or drugs that induce nausea while exposing individuals to same-sex images.
The simplest form of conversion therapy is spoofed in a comedy song in the Broadway musical Book of Mormon, where gay missionaries are taught when they have thoughts of same-sex attraction to “turn it off, like a lightbulb.”
Every major medical and mental health organization, including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association, has condemned conversion therapy.
Yet the practice continues all across the nation. According to The Trevor Project, 21% of LGBTQ young people in Kentucky have been threatened with or subjected to conversion therapy.
The Kentucky counselors wrote that LGBTQ youth “are not inherently prone to suicide — rather, it is the stigma, discrimination and harmful practices like conversion therapy that put them at greater risk. HB-495 would remove critical protections for vulnerable youth and put them at an even greater risk of harm.”
Further, this can be a money-making scheme, they warn. “Conversion ‘therapists’ take advantage of parents’ good intentions and mislead them into placing their child in a dangerous environment where the practitioner is pushing an agenda. Not only does conversion therapy not work, but evidence has also consistently shown that it worsens the mental health and overall well-being of LGBTQ youth.”
More than 20 states have banned or restricted conversion therapy.
Who’s defending Kaley Chiles?
In the case before the U.S. Supreme Court — expected to be argued this fall — counselor Kaley Chiles claims Colorado law violates her free speech rights and prevents her from helping minors change their behaviors, sexual orientation or gender expressions even when the client wishes to do so.
Chiles earned a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies from Dallas Baptist University and a master of arts in clinical psychology from Denver Seminary. She is a youth and worship leader at Calvary Worship Center in Colorado Springs, a conservative nondenominational congregation. She operates a private practice as a counselor
Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group spun off from Focus on the Family, is representing Chiles in the case.
Kristen Waggoner
“The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors, nor should a counselor be used as a tool to impose the government’s biased views on her clients,” said ADF President and General Counsel Kristen Waggoner. “There is a growing consensus around the world that adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria need love and an opportunity to talk through their struggles and feelings. Colorado’s law prohibits what’s best for these children and sends a clear message: the only option for children struggling with these issues is to give them dangerous and experimental drugs and surgery that will make them lifelong patients. We are eager to defend Kaley’s First Amendment rights and ensure that government officials may not impose their ideology on private conversations between counselors and clients.”
Liberty Counsel, another conservative evangelical legal advocacy group, filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take the case and intends to file an additional amicus brief now that the case has been accepted.
Is this about ‘talk therapy’?
On one level, the case is spun as being about how much government may regulate so-called “talk therapy.”
Liberty Counsel said in its brief that talk therapy “helps minors with unwanted same-sex attractions and is protected speech rather than conduct the state can regulate. Colorado, in order to censor dissenting viewpoints, ‘conspicuously ignored’ studies that show talk therapy for unwanted confusion and same-sex attractions is safe and effective.”
“Talk therapy” is widely used by all kinds of counselors and therapists. It is the specific nature of this therapy — that sometimes exceeds the bounds of talk to physical intervention and that is based on spiritual shaming — that has drawn scrutiny.
Liberty Counsel has led efforts to repeal these kinds of therapy bans in Florida and Iowa. They and other advocates for conversion therapy complain that such bans only run one way.
Mat Staver
“Laws that restrict only one viewpoint regarding ‘gender identity’ violate the First Amendment,” said Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver. “Talk therapy is speech, and the government has no authority to restrict that speech to just one viewpoint. … Counselors and clients should have the freedom to choose the counsel of their choice and be free of government censorship.”
The other side of the argument sees danger ahead in the Supreme Court taking up this case.
“It is alarming that the Supreme Court would consider a challenge to Colorado’s critical protections for LGBTQ youth,” said Ma’ayan Anafi, senior counsel for health equity and justice at the National Women’s Law Center. “Colorado, like 22 other states, has recognized that no child should be subjected to ‘conversion therapy,’ the dangerous attempt to change people’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Opposed by every major medical organization, this long-debunked practice is unethical, harmful and even deadly. … SCOTUS must uphold Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy, and we will continue to advocate to keep LGBTQ youth safe.”
Kelley Robinson
Kelley Robinson, president of Human Rights Campaign, also expressed alarm about the Supreme Court case.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to take up this case isn’t just about so-called ‘conversion therapy’ — it’s about whether extremists can use our courts to push their dangerous agenda, in an effort to erase LGBTQ people and gut protections that keep our kids safe,” she said. “There’s no debate: so-called ‘conversion therapy’ is a dangerous practice, not therapy, and it has no place in our communities. These bans exist to protect LGBTQ children from harm — period.
“Attacks on LGBTQ rights are the entry point to attacks on all of our rights. The same people trying to legalize abuse under the guise of ‘therapy’ are the ones banning books, ripping away reproductive rights, and undermining our democracy. The Supreme Court must uphold the 10th Circuit decision finding that these laws are constitutional.”
Related articles:
Review of research underscores harms of conversion therapy and importance of family affirmation
Undoing the damage of conversion therapy | Opinion by Amber Wylde
Al Mohler’s curious defense of conversion therapy | Analysis by Alan Bean
Panelists make the Christian case against conversion therapy: It harms people