By Rick Plasterer, Juicy Ecumenism. (Photo credit: adflegal.org)
Professional counseling to overcome homosexuality or transgenderism has been the focus of attack by the LGBT movement at home and abroad for some time. A major decision, crucially important for religious freedom, free speech, and liberty of conscience, which should be definitive, but may well have to be fought in litigation in other cases, was issued by the Supreme Court this spring in the Chiles v. Salazar case.
Kaley Chiles is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and a Licensed Addiction Counselor (LAC) in Colorado. She is associated with Deeper Stories Counseling, which attempts to “bridge the divide between the mental health community and the faith community.” She filed a pre-enforcement lawsuit against Colorado’s ban on professional counseling against homosexuality or transgenderism for minors (the Minor Conversion Therapy Law (MCTL)) as an unconstitutional ban on freedom of religion and freedom of speech. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with her free speech claims in a March 31 decision that the MCTL was both an “egregious assault” on free speech and guilty of “viewpoint discrimination” (the state mandating speech in favor of a particular viewpoint in an ongoing controversy, one of the worst violations of the free speech doctrine).
The Danger in Counseling Bans
The great danger in such laws – beyond the fact that people ought to be able the access such counseling if they want – is that the prohibition of speech against homosexuality or transgenderism will spread from professional counseling to any such speech by anyone. This is shown in many Western nations and jurisdictions that have done exactly that, so that even the counseling of a parent to their child against LGBT behavior or inclination is illegal.