WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the constitutionality of a Colorado law banning counseling for unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion in minors, better known as “conversion therapy.”
As LifeSiteNews reported last December, Colorado Democrat Gov. Jared Polis signed the “Minor Conversion Therapy Law” in 2019. It “prohibits a licensed physician specializing in psychiatry or a licensed, certified, or registered mental health care provider from engaging in conversion therapy with a patient under 18 years of age,” according to the bill summary. “Conversion therapy” is defined as “efforts to change an individual’s sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier in 2024 year the law is legal as it regulates “professional conduct.” But opponents Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of Chiles v. Salazar, which concerns the First Amendment rights of counselors like Kaley Chiles.
On Monday, the nation’s highest court agreed to take up the case after rejecting multiple similar cases in the past, USA Today reported.
“This is a pressing national issue, and we need the Supreme Court to weigh in and to make it clear that counselors should be free to help these kids that are struggling with these issues and that they shouldn’t be put in a straitjacket and forced to only direct them in one way,” ADF attorney Jim Campbell declared.
“In Colorado, we are committed to protecting professional standards of care so that no one suffers unscientific and harmful so-called gay conversion therapy,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser responded.
Opponents of conversion therapy commonly elicit opposition to the practice by invoking fringe, abusive practices such as electric shock and other forms of physically harmful junk science. But in reality, modern reparative treatment consists largely of simple counseling, the effectiveness of which is backed by studies as well as testimony from those who have benefited.
Liberals have long opposed conversion therapy as a harmful, activist influence on impressionable children. In recent years, however, conservatives say their opposition has taken on a particularly hypocritical quality given left-wing activists’ widespread embrace of not only actively encouraging transgenderism in gender-confused children but also subjecting them to potentially irreversible surgical and chemical transition procedures.
