A 2020 Anchorage ordinance that bans counselors from helping minors reduce or overcome unwanted LGBTQ sexual attractions appears to be a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Colorado law.
In an 8-1 ruling on March 31, the Supreme Court found that Colorado’s law banning conversion talk-therapy for minors violates the First Amendment.
The case involves counselor Kaley Chiles, who helps clients with various issues, including gender identity. Many of Chiles’ clients come to her because they share her Christian worldview and faith-based values. These clients believe their lives will be more fulfilling if they are aligned with the teachings of their faith. Yet Colorado law – like Anchorage’s – censored Chiles from sharing certain perspectives.
The ruling opens the door for legal challenges to Anchorage’s current ban on counselor speech that aims to help minors overcome LGBTQ attraction.
The hard-left Anchorage Assembly passed the ban on a 9-2 vote back in 2020, despite repeated warnings during public comment periods that the ordinance violated the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
While the Anchorage law bans counselors from speaking out against LGBTQ dogma, it empowers counselors and therapists to actively encourage minors to explore their same-sex attractions or even to consider permanent surgeries or powerful cross-sex chemicals and puberty blockers to “transition” to the opposite sex.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
Like Anchorage, the Colorado law only prohibited counseling conversations in one direction. For example, it allowed counseling conversations that steer young people toward a gender identity different than their sex, but prohibited conversations that helped them return to comfort with their sex – even when they desire that.
In overturning the Colorado law, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. The justices held that the Colorado statute unlawfully regulates speech based on viewpoint by prohibiting counselors from engaging in certain conversations with minor clients aimed at aligning sexual orientation or gender identity with biological sex (or reducing unwanted same-sex attractions), while allowing affirmative approaches.
Ruth Institute President Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse welcomed the ruling as a victory for “counseling freedom,” stating it protects the ability of counselors to provide compassionate, client-directed talk therapy without state viewpoint discrimination.
The decision remands the case to lower courts for further proceedings and is expected to influence similar laws in other states regarding professional speech in counseling.
6 Comments
The gay communists will not be deterred. They will continue to pollute our society and culture until they are forced to stop. Not even this ruling will alter their course. A courageous Anchorage therapist will have to challenge the ban. Kudos to whomever that individual is. We need this therapy to assist children in not making terrible decisions.
Another disingenuous post from Joel.
The law SCOTUS tossed out is nothing like what Anchorage bans. For starters, being gay is not a mental disorder, so therapy is not needed to ‘change’ it, nor is that even possible. If people chose their sexuality then that would make everyone Bi-sexual. For another, conversion therapy has been proven to harm children and increase suicidal ideation and self-harm by kids. It’s NOT just ‘talking’, and speech is the only thing SCOTUS protected in their ruling. People are already allowed to verbally talk about whatever they want in Alaska. But forcing a child to listen against their will is not the same thing.
You thinking that doesn’t make it true.
not everybody would choose to be bisexual. I certainly don’t want to be. You do know that books are not going to turn a child gay or trans or bi or…… They are born that way.
Unfortunately in most cases these are not adults who are seeking conversion therapy voluntarily, for themselves, but rather the minor children of parents who can’t cope with the fact that their kids might be Gay.
Did you know that Dunleavy supports the lgbtq? I bet you don’t!