Religious belief shouldn't justify a practice that harms Colorado kids
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday March 20, 2024. (Danielle Prokop/Source NM)
Conversion therapy hurts kids. There's no legitimate disagreement about that. And the harm it causes is the one fact above all others that should anchor any discussion about the practice, especially in context of the law, and even more when supposed religious rights threaten to muddle moral clarity.
Let's state this clearly at the outset: The right of a person to exercise religious faith does not confer special child-harming privileges.
That principle should be easy enough for most people to accept without hesitation, but it comes in for challenge in a Colorado case whose outcome now rests with the conservative U.S. Supreme Court. The case involves a Christian therapist from Colorado Springs who claims a state ban on conversion therapy infringes on her First Amendment rights.
Lower courts have correctly rejected her argument, but, as the therapist no doubt knows, several MAGA-aligned justices are eager to take a closer look.
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Conversion therapy involves efforts to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. In practice it's invariably an attempt to coerce LGBTQ+ people into straight, cisgender lifestyles. The fundamental flaw in the practice is the false premise that a nonconforming sexual orientation or gender identity is an illness subject to 'therapy.' Mainstream mental health professionals have long acknowledged LGBTQ+ expressions as normal and healthy, and, conversely, they have rejected efforts to change sexual orientation and gender identity as harmful, since those efforts can lead to suicidal behavior, depression and other serious symptoms.
That's why Colorado in 2019 passed a law that banned doctors and mental health professionals from practicing conversion therapy for minors. As of today at least 22 states and the District of Columbia have passed similar bans.
One of the sponsors of the Colorado bill, state Senate President Pro Tempore Dafna Michaelson Jenet, a Commerce City Democrat, said, 'We heard gut-wrenching testimony as well as research and data about the lifelong consequences of conversion therapy and even stories of suicide. The evidence was overwhelming: conversion therapy is deeply and often permanently harmful to youth.'
But Kaley Chiles wants to elevate her Christian faith over research and evidence. A licensed professional counselor at Deeper Stories Counseling in Colorado Springs, Chiles sued the state in federal district court over its conversion therapy ban, claiming it violated her constitutional guarantee of free speech and free exercise of religion.
The district court rejected her claim, and the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling.
Those courts found that the state was properly regulating conduct, not speech, to protect residents. They determined that any restriction on speech was incidental and that Colorado's ban on conversion therapy, being neutral and applicable to everyone, does not unconstitutionally abridge Chiles' right to freely exercise religion.
Crucially, as the 10th Circuit opinion noted, Chiles never substantially challenged the medical consensus that conversion therapy is ineffective and harmful.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced this week that it will review Chiles' case during its next term, which starts in October. The legal matter before the Supreme Court is limited to the free speech question, but Chiles herself makes clear in her appeal to the justices that her case is about religion.
Her petition at the outset says, 'A practicing Christian, Chiles believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God's design, including their biological sex.'
In other words, she believes gay and transgender people can't flourish, because her church says so, and the church knows better than medical professionals.
This posture of 'God told me this, so I have a right to hurt people like that' shows up in other cultures, and it's revealing to consider one of those examples, since many Americans are desensitized to Western cases like conversion therapy.
Many Muslim groups, especially in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, practice genital mutilation on young girls. Most Americans, and most Western Christians, likely recoil in horror at the thought of this barbaric tradition. Unlike conversion therapy, genital mutilation inflicts immediate, grievous physical damage, but the same principle of faith-justified-harm is at work, and there is no doubt in the medical literature that conversion therapy can lead to serious damage, even death. The only humane response is to recoil at the practice of conversion therapy.
Religion itself is not the problem. Many believers flourish mainly because of their faith, and their personal practice of religion should not be begrudged or infringed. Furthermore, there is plenty of legal room for Chiles to discuss faith with her clients in a professional setting.
But she does not have a right, legally or ethically, to engage in the child-harming practice of conversion therapy.
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