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The plaintiff argues that her speech is being censored based on its viewpoint and her clients are harmed because they can’t get help in their quest to overcome unwanted attraction and gender dysphoria.
A Colorado counselor has asked the Supreme Court to hear her challenge to the state’s “conversion therapy” ban, which stops her from having conversations with minors about their unwanted same-sex attraction and gender identity issues.
Kaley Chiles is a licensed professional counselor in Colorado and a Christian. Many of her clients share similar religious views and expressly seek her help because of their shared religious beliefs.
Chiles does not force her beliefs on any clients, but after discussing with them their objectives, desires, and religious or spiritual values, she formulates methods of counseling that would be beneficial.
Many of her clients come to her because they are struggling with issues relating to sexual orientation or gender identity that are distressing to them because their feelings or actions are not in line with their own spiritual values.
Her clients seek to “to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with [their] physical body.”
Chiles only works “‘with voluntary clients who determine the goals that they have for themselves.’ If clients are content with their sexual orientation or gender identity, Chiles does not ‘try to help [them] change their attractions, behavior, or identity’ but instead helps them develop other therapeutic goals.”
However, Chiles is unable to serve the first group of clients properly due to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy,” or any effort to help a person accept their biological sex or deal with unwanted same-sex attraction.
Chiles and her legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) claim that the law censors Chiles’s speech based on its viewpoint, a violation of the First Amendment, and harms her clients who want her assistance.
Specific to the issue of gender identity, the application cites studies and England’s National Institute of Health’s Cass Review showing that the vast majority of children will eventually come to accept their biological sex, if not encouraged to transition.
ADF also notes that the Cass Review found that many healthcare professionals are afraid to treat patients’ other mental health issues (such as anxiety and depression) and help them accept their true sex due to fears of violating laws such as Colorado’s. So instead of helping children, they set them on the track to a lifetime of harmful medical interventions without addressing their underlying mental health issues.
Chiles and ADF are asking for the Supreme Court’s intervention due to a split among federal courts on the constitutionality of conversion therapy bans.
The Courts of Appeals for the Third and Eleventh Circuits have ruled that the bans are laws which censor speech and blocked them, while the Ninth and Tenth Circuits have ruled that because the speech is that of licensed professionals, the laws regulate conduct and not speech and are constitutional.
“That result leaves detransitioners— those who adopted a transgender identity but now identify with their biological sex—with no counseling support whatsoever in much of the United States,” writes ADF.
“Meanwhile, ‘affirmative’ and ‘exploratory’ approaches’—the very ones Colorado blesses—have been ‘weaponised [such] that … young person[s]’ feel forced into ‘a medical pathway’—despite the lack of evidence that experimental medical intervention will help. By upholding counseling censorship, the Tenth Circuit’s ruling here and the Ninth Circuit’s in Tingley tell countless minors they have no choice but to medically transition.”
In January, the nation’s High Court declined to resolve the issue when it refused to take Brian Tingley’s case challenging Washington’s ban on conversion therapy. Standing for Freedom Center writer William Wolfe explained that law like this:
“In summary, this Washington law stops Tingley from counseling minors toward their very own goals when it comes to matters of ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ unless those goals are essentially ‘preapproved’ by the state.
In other words, Tingley can encourage children who don’t want to identify as homosexual or transgender to do so, even against their specific request for counseling to help fight their sin or gender confusion. That’s the only speech Tingley is permitted under this radical law. But if he counsels them to fight their homosexual lust, or to be comfortable in their God-given bodies — again, per the counselees’ request — he is risking a $5,000 fine and the loss of his license.
This law essentially locks in one option, and one option only, for confused youth: encourage them to be ‘gay’ and ‘trans’ — no matter what.”
Three of the justices voted to hear the case. Justice Clarence Thomas predicted in his dissent that the issue would come before the Court again if they did not rule on it.
In India, they have their own conversion bans that, while seemingly different, are really the same. Radical Hindu governments across that country have implemented anti-conversion laws aimed at stopping the growth of Christianity. The laws supposedly halt “forced conversions,” but what they really are is a weapon designed to ban Christian practice.
The laws are used to prevent Christians from holding worship services, Bible studies, prayer meetings, and charitable outreach and have even been used to stop or break up marriages, claiming that one of the parties is being “forced” to convert.
Persecution against Christians is widespread in India, and anti-conversion laws often serve as justification for it.
At the heart of anti-conversion laws isn’t the desire to stop Christians from forcing their views on someone or to stop a forced conversion; rather it’s the desire to force people to remain or convert to Hinduism.
The Indian government seeks to stop people who willingly want to become Christians, exercise their faith, or marry a Christian from doing so because it hates Christianity and seeks to protect Hinduism.
There is virtually no difference between anti-conversion laws in India and the conversion therapy bans in the over 20 U.S. states that have them.
The government is stopping licensed counselors from speaking, stopping patients from obtaining the help they seek, prescribing what is orthodox, and essentially telling children that if they ever have doubts about their gender identity or experience same-sex attraction, they must try to medically change their gender or be homosexual.
That is because these states, much like the Hindu states in India, have their own religion: LGBT ideology. They detest Christianity and its condemnation of sexual sin, its affirmation of the immutability of sex, and its promise that Christ can free a person from the clutches of sin.
This is a blatant act of government intrusion into the private lives of individuals, the censorship of speech it disfavors, and religious discrimination.
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will take up this case and rule these laws unconstitutional, upholding the Constitution’s ban on the establishment of a state religion and upholding the God-given right of an individual to freely practice his or her religious beliefs.
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