Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ+ kids
apnews.com
The Supreme Court has ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado, one of about two dozen states that banned the discredited practice.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado, one of about two dozen states that ban the discredited practice.

An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide if it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

  • Puddinghelmet@lemmy.world
    2·
    7 hours ago

    And then they wonder why the rest of the world looks at the US like a bizarre mix of Enlightenment ideals and medieval dogma. I mean, Locke, Voltaire, and Kant are spinning in their graves right now watching how their ‘right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ has been hijacked by a movement that actively denies science, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ existence in the name of a god nobody can even agree on.

    It’s the ultimate paradox: the same country that gave the world the First Amendment (thanks, Voltaire!) now has a Supreme Court majority that thinks genuinely held religious beliefs can override basic human rights like letting a child die because a doctor’s ‘deeply held belief’ says so.

    And let’s not forget the irony of a nation built on the idea that government should not impose religion (see: Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration) now trying to turn it into a Christian nationalist state where ‘freedom of religion’ somehow means ‘freedom to discriminate against anyone who doesn’t pray in your direction.’ So yes, the US isn’t an official theocracy… yet? But it’s doing its damndest to feel like one, all while claiming to be the ‘beacon of democracy.’ Meanwhile, Charlie Kirk and his ilk are out here acting like the Ayatollah of some sort of Christian Taliban. If this isn’t a lesson in how fragile democratic values are, I don’t know what is. Europe’s secularism and Enlightenment values might just be the only thing keeping the US from fully regressing into a theocratic dystopia.