This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 8-1 against a Colorado law banning licensed therapists from offering LGBTQ+ conversion therapy.
This paves the way to override regional bans and potentially legalize conversion therapy — at least talk therapy, offered by licensed mental health providers — across the country.
The court’s grounds for doing so: Talk therapy is freedom of speech, and therefore covered by the First Amendment.
At the steps of San Francisco City Hall a few hours later, a group gathered for a press conference organized by Sen. Scott Wiener to express disapproval at the ruling.
“We need to be very very clear that conversion therapy is psychological torture,” Wiener said to the crowd of about 20 — mostly legislative aides and other City Hall regulars. “It is not possible to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. We are who we are.”
Conversion therapy is a practice used to change a person’s gender identity or sexuality to align with heterosexuality. In the 20th century, practitioners would often perform electroshock therapy on patients. Now, conversion therapy is most commonly done through talk therapy. It was banned in California and 22 other states.
Wiener introduced SB 934 earlier this month, a state bill that would better enable Californians treated by conversion therapy to sue for malpractice.
Martin Rawlings-Fein, co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club, said the topic is personal to him.
“When I was young, my mother’s friends pushed her to send me to conversion therapy. She said no. Even in the 1990s, she knew, she understood the danger that it posed to my mental health and my life,” Rawlings-Fein said.
“Not every young person has someone to say ‘no.’ That’s why these protections matter.”
People coming into City Hall or walking around the perimeter stopped in their tracks to observe the proceedings. One man, possibly a tourist, took a selfie with the scene, but seemed to not understand what was going on.
About 10 minutes into the conference, a woman decked out in several crosses appeared and began to shout. She carried a canvas painted with phrases like “Pedophile Land,” “Welcome to San Francisco,” “Repent Now,” and “End of the World.” She shouted “danger,” “rape,” “slaughter,” and “You are the most evil people on the Earth.”
When the presenters spoke, the woman blew into a whistle, trying to drown them out.
When asked if this happens often, Erik Mebust, Wiener’s director of communications, replied, “All the time.”
Mebust walked over and spoke with the woman for a few minutes.
“She opposes conversion therapy,” Mebust reported back. “She thinks it’s torture.”
The woman walked off once she found out what the press conference was about.
I’m curious about that plan to mitigate the ruling’s impacts. The color about passers-by is fun, but the plan is what I’d really most like to hear about from this press conference.
The child must be the client, not the parents in order to maintain the appropriate client protections and build a therapeutic trust level. A therapist willing to work on any other terms with a minor with issues over sexuality – or many issues- would be vulnerable to a suit for malpractice when the child reaches legal age.
If we are not willing to emancipate children from this kind of medical child abuse, on what grounds can we protect a child from being forced to donate bone marrow or the lobe of a liver? Are parents allowed to kill their children by refusing established medical treatment? Minors with issues of sexual and gender identity are in danger of suicide.
The broadest issue is whether the Bill of Rights protects (total) freedom based on “sincere beliefs” or freedom FROM having someone else’s religious beliefs imposed on the rest of us.
Not that many centuries ago in the West the Christian Church was a political force, with its own buildings, lands taxes, laws, diplomats and armies. The state recognizes established religious groups and grants them a relatively high degree of autonomy and authority. over themselves and influence in general.
In this reactionary era, a powerfully united well funded minority is following a plan that began over 50 years ago to reverse what Progressives viewed as progress, such as racial equality, fewer sexual constraints, a liberal interpretation of free speech, and the responsibility of the government to use its enormous access to wealth to improve life, education, health, freedom and a responsible approach to stewardiship of the environment and a sustainable value system.
The USSC ruling was pretty narrow. It held that conversion talk therapy (but no other, e.g. drugs) was protected speech, and thus the state’s ban must be assessed under a strict scrutiny standard (rather than a lenient rational basis standard). It did not overturn the ban – that will be decided when the lower court determines the claim under the proper standard. The ban may or may not be upheld.
Once again, Senator Wiener is demonstrating the political leadership and dedication that makes him the best and most substantive legislator in California in my lifetime — be it civil rights, forward-looking environmental and housing policy, or issues of social and economic justice and affordability.
Basically, all the critical issues of this generational moment.
I am no fan of Scott Wiener. However, I support SB-934. That said, I am a homosexual and I admit to trying to convert heterosexuals. It didn’t work and this silly conversion therapy is pseudoscience, and should be exposed. Or, let’s create a movement of reverse conversion therapy. I think it will do better than a lawsuit. Why? Though I trust juries, you can’t trust our court justices, especially when we know even with a jury victory, the cases will be appealed until the cows come home.