Free speech has been under attack for years in America. States are trying to force everyone from bakers to florists to pro-life medical professionals to conform to government-preferred speech or go out of business.
The best-known cases are those of Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips and pregnancy centers represented by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. The U.S. Supreme Court recently protected these and other Americans from local governments that sought to deny them their First Amendment rights.
The Court’s protections are welcome, as these Americans are not alone in being attacked. Faith-based adoption providers have been forced to close their doors for refusing to violate their core convictions about the best types of homes for children in their care. Even the ACLU, which defended Nazi free speech in the past, has recently sued Catholic hospitals to force them to provide contraceptives and abortions.
Attacks on free speech don’t hurt just creative professionals, adoption providers, pro-life centers, hospitals, and counseling centers. They devastate those who seek their services. In the most recent threat to free speech, poorly-written and sweeping “sexual conversion therapy” bans are now attempting to prevent licensed psychologists and counselors, as well as pastors, from helping men and women work toward their own self-defined sexual-therapy goals.
I’m one of those clinical psychologists, and my clients — who desire to heal from trauma and sexual addiction as they explore the possibility of leaving homosexuality behind — would be without recourse under these laws. These broad conversion therapy bans put the client’s choice at risk by substituting government-approved outcomes for the client’s own goals.
I consider it unethical that the state would deny adults the therapy of their choice. To be sure, I fully agree with banning harmful so-called “treatment” methods such as shock therapy. That is a clinically appropriate goal, and I’d happily work with anyone at any time to ban such methods. However, it is an ideological and not a medical choice to render it illegal for people to explore heterosexuality with the help of a licensed professional. It puts the government squarely at odds with the express wishes of those same-sex attracted persons who believe homosexuality does not represent who they really are.
For example, under the ban that was proposed in California, I could treat a heterosexual person with a pornography addiction without government interference. However, if a gay man came to me with the same addiction, I’d be forced to turn him away because his attractions happen to be homosexual. Ironically, this would mean turning my clients away based on their sexual orientation, a violation of their 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law.
Frequently, my clients have been victims of sex abuse. They describe how childhood trauma affected their sexual identity. They seek access to APA-recognized therapies that can help them reduce their unwanted attractions. Yet, some lawmakers and activists seek to prevent them from choosing that option.
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If radical LGBT activists have their way, patients will become the latest casualties of government policies that are coercive, intrusive, and crippling to free speech and choice https://t.co/PYzsueu48t
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 1, 2018
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