The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up the case of a Christian counselor who claimed a state law in Washington barring conversion therapy for gay youth infringed on his constitutional rights of speech and religion.
This ends the latest challenge to laws in more than 20 states that ban professional counselors from utilizing controversial forms of therapy that assume homosexuality is a sinful, disordered lifestyle choice that must be reversed or repaired.
The decision was a setback for Alliance Defending Freedom, the powerful Christian legal group co-founded by James Dobson that won two previous Supreme Court cases supporting Christian bakers and website creators who refuse to work with people in same-sex weddings.
Brian Tingley
Counselor Brian Tingley claimed Washington’s ban on providing conversion therapy to minors infringed on his rights, saying the private conversations he had with clients were “speech, not conduct.”
But a circuit court disagreed, ruling the state has the authority to regulate professional conduct of registered counselors. That ruling will stand now that the Supreme Court has declined to review it.
But the battle is far from over. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said the court should have taken the case, and there’s a good chance ADF will give them new opportunities to do so. The issue “is not going away,” an ADF leader said.
Tingley must refrain from counseling minors to orient their sexual identity around their birth gender, but he remains free to promote and offer such counseling to adults through religious counseling.
Conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, is a controversial procedure that has long been promoted by some evangelical groups and counselors but largely rejected by the medical community, which considers it neither effective nor safe and says it increases risks of depression and suicide.
Exodus International, an evangelical ministry to gays and lesbians, promoted the therapy for decades before shutting down in 2013. Its leaders apologized to the gay community for being “imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings nor biblical.”
John Paulk
John Paulk, another Exodus leader, worked with Focus on the Family, becoming a national ambassador for the gay conversion cause before reclaiming a gay identity and offering his own apology: “I am truly, truly sorry for the pain I have caused. For 25 years I felt guilty and filled with self-loathing, trying to reject this part about myself. I’m culpable — I spread the message that my sexuality had changed.”
Focus on the Family, which backed Colorado’s 1992 Amendment 2 restricting gay rights, launched its “Love Won Out” ministry in 1998, organizing more than 50 conferences that told churches how to handle people “who struggle with unwanted same-sex attractions,” a condition Focus said was “preventable and treatable.”
Focus sold “Love Won Out” to Exodus in 2009, citing financial pressures.
The Exodus saga is the subject of the Netflix documentary Pray Away.
Today, Focus supports the Restored Hope Network, a Colorado Springs-based group led by Paulk’s ex-wife.
Focus’ Christian Counselor’s Network includes counselors who offer to help parents address children’s same-sex and gender issues. A group that opposes the practice says there may be 1,300 practitioners.
Jim Daly
Focus offers up differing takes on conversion therapy. Jim Daly addressed the subject in a blog post: “Does Focus on the Family Promote ‘Gay Conversion Therapy’ ?”
“For the record, we at Focus do not advocate for any therapy that ‘requires’ or promises categorical change or sexual conversion,” Daly wrote. “We especially denounce any practice that shames, degrades, coerces, abuses or insults individuals with demands to earn basic human acceptance.
“We believe the availability of respectful, safe, ethical counseling in matters of sexuality honors all clients by allowing them to receive meaningful help that aligns with their values,” wrote Daly, who warned that the “right of individuals to seek assistance in living within biblical guidelines is increasingly at risk.”
A report from Focus’s Daily Citizen claims: “There is no ‘horrific practice’ known as ‘conversion therapy.’ No counselor or therapist ever put out a sign saying, ‘I offer conversion therapy’ or ‘I’ll convert you from gay to straight!’ There is no such clinical practice.
Mike Rosebush
“The term was invented by activists who oppose the truth that some people with same-sex attractions or gender identity confusion don’t want to embrace those thoughts, feelings, identities or behaviors.”
That’s not true, says Mike Rosebush, who served as a Focus vice president from 1995 to 2004. He personally underwent Focus’ prescribed reparative therapy and promoted it to others before outing himself as gay to Jim Daly, resigning from Focus and starting a counseling practice to help men overcome the shame such therapy can cause.
“What was the net effect of years of dedicated devotion to the ‘curative’ methods of reparative therapy and Homosexuals Anonymous? I became so discouraged and hopeless that I thought of killing myself,” Rosebush wrote in one of his posts.
“Thousands of gay youth blame Focus for abusive reorientation practices that their parents insisted upon,” he said. “… Despite all the current evidence of the inefficacy of conversion therapy, Focus still stands by its core beliefs: gay is bad, and gays can change.”
Related articles:
Undoing the damage of conversion therapy | Opinion by Amber Wylde
Review of research underscores harms of conversion therapy and importance of family affirmation
Al Mohler’s curious defense of conversion therapy | Analysis by Alan Bean
Panelists make the Christian case against conversion therapy: It harms people
When a teenager gets kicked to the curb by Christian parents | Opinion by Dan McGee and Linda Francis Cross