(LifeSiteNews) — People who have been helped by counseling to turn away from homosexual and transgender ideology are asking the Supreme Court to protect free speech and the rights of individuals to seek counseling to help them with their struggles.
Legal advocates, including Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), want the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of Chiles v. Salazar.
This case concerns Colorado’s prohibition on so-called “conversion therapy,” which really refers to helping someone who suffers from a homosexual tendency or confusion about their gender to live a fulfilling life by turning from their confusion and from harmful practices. But the state tells counselors they are only allowed to encourage homosexuality and transgenderism with minor patients, not to discourage it. This violates the First Amendment rights of counselors like Kaley Chiles, the named plaintiff in this case. ADF is representing Chiles.
Colorado’s Democrat Governor Jared Polis signed the “Minor Conversion Therapy Law” in 2019. Polis, who is homosexual, fashions himself as a libertarian. However, he often supports efforts by his state to crack down on the free speech rights of Christians and others who have different views than him, including baker Jack Phillips and pro-life pregnancy centers.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year the law is legal as it regulates “professional conduct.” Advocates for biological reality and chaste living say the Supreme Court should intervene.
“The Colorado government’s plan to displace any idea about counseling people with same-sex attraction and gender incongruence that doesn’t conform to its own narrow vision is gravely harmful, for reasons linked to the values the marketplace of ideas protects,” an amicus brief from the CHANGED Movement states. The group “is a community of friends who once identified as LGBTQ+ and exchanged that identity for a Christian worldview.”
Such individuals are harmed by Colorado’s mandate.
“The unavoidable result is that those who struggle with matters of gender identity and sexual orientation are barred from accessing help from a mental health professional that can yield concrete benefits and avoid concrete harms,” the amicus states. “Coerced affirmation of the state’s view of gender identity and sexual orientation, even when it will produce harms or avoid benefits, is all that Colorado allows.”
The brief includes a story of how counseling helped one person who suffered from a homosexual tendency handle his inclinations and improve his mental health.
The man, named Daniel, struggled with a homosexual inclination and “sexual addiction.” These issues “produced feelings of depression, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety.”
But a Biblical-based counselor helped him. “God began to work in my heart in unexpected ways” and “I found myself increasingly aligned with what I believe to be God’s design for sexuality and marriage,” the now-married man says, according to the brief.
The brief includes other stories of individuals with underlying mental health issues who were helped by counseling to overcome their gender confusion.
A coalition of Protestant and Catholic entities also criticized the law. A filed brief includes the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute and the Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs.
The Christian organizations criticized the “heavy-handed government censorship” of “Biblical truth.”
They explained:
Colorado has adopted the viewpoint that people can change their sex. This contradicts biological and Biblical truth. Counseling consistent with the Christian worldview is a protected free speech viewpoint The State seeks to enforce its own viewpoint by censoring contrary views upon pain of fines, sanctions, and licensure restrictions.
They also warned of “devastating real-world consequence” if the law is allowed to stay in effect.
States should not need to “choose between making a living in a licensed profession and exercising their right to speak freely,” the brief argues.
Citizens, like Chiles, must “be free from such censorship.”
Alliance Defending Freedom criticized Colorado’s attempt to “impose” “biased views” on the clients of Chiles, the counselor.
“The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors, nor should a counselor be used as a tool to impose the government’s biased views on her clients,” ADF Legal Counsel Logan Barnett stated in a news release.
The court should intervene to affirm “all Americans should be allowed to speak freely and seek the best possible help they desire,” ADF stated.
The case is similar to a pending Supreme Court case concerning state protections for gender-confused minors.
The Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this month in a related case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, which looks at whether states can protect minors from these harmful and permanently damaging procedures. While laws, like Tennessee’s, promote the truth of the immutability of sex, Colorado’s counseling prohibition aims to promote the false idea that homosexuality and gender confusion should be embraced.
Meanwhile, around 80 percent of individuals with gender-confusion will outgrow their struggles naturally, and counseling and prayer can help the others with their burdens.
Transgender drugs and surgeries, in addition to promoting the false idea that someone can change their sex, are also linked to bone density loss, infertility, and heart diseases.