- cross-posted to:
- usnews@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- usnews@beehaw.org
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.”
Therapy is not thought or speech, it is treatment. If a treatment is not effective or even makes the patient less healthy, or abuses them, we stop that. Nothing to do with free speech, because we don’t treat based on ideology, we treat based on prior results that we recorded and retested.
If 8 of those judges thought differently, lets make it 3-2 because the other half is bought and paid for anyway, that this is somehow shielding FROM orthodoxy instead of shield orthodoxy itself, they are just completely empty on the inside. Conversion therapy is abuse, plain and simple. 8 supreme court judges voted for abuse. game over.
The main reason the more liberal justices joined in on this is that the law was badly written.
Conversion therapy needs to be banned, but the how of the ban matters.