By Rick Plasterer, Juicy Ecumenism. (Photo credit: adflegal.org)
An earlier article discussed the recent Chiles v. Salazar case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court determined that Colorado (and, at least potentially, any jurisdiction) cannot prohibit psychotherapy involving only speech which is aimed at reducing or eliminating same-sex attraction. Speech by professionals is protected under the First Amendment, as it is for laymen. The article considered, in particular, briefs to the court supporting Colorado, and the “medical consensus” they claimed against any form of “speech only” therapy to correct same-sex attraction or identification with the opposite sex (transgenderism), even when requested by patients. This article will look at arguments from briefs supporting Kaley Chiles, the Colorado Licensed Professional Counselor (LAC) who brought the pre-enforcement challenge against Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law. The law prohibited licensed counselors (psychologists, psychiatrists, LACs, etc.) from engaging in sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), which critics of this practice refer to as “conversion therapy” with minors.
SOCGICE and the Professional Consensus
Probably the most notable argument made, pointed out by conservative-aligned but not specifically religiously affiliated organizations, was that however strongly the respected medical organizations asserted a conclusive consensus that sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), or sexual orientation change and gender identity change efforts (SOCGICE) are ineffective and harmful, the documentation they provided included frank and not infrequent admissions that there are no scientifically rigorous studies showing that SOCGICE is ineffective or harmful. The confident assertions appear to be based on anecdotes and tying speech only therapy to coercive, and in some cases gruesome, physical interventions used to change sexual orientation decades ago, when there was a strong public and medical consensus against homosexuality (which was criminal, at least as a sexual activity, in all states before 1961). Another crucial point is that with the addition of transgenderism to the LGBT acronym, a licensed professional counseling a minor to identify with his or her biological sex, however strongly desired by the patient, was illegal in Colorado.