SCOTUS ‘trans therapy’ case is a lifesaving, free-speech slam dunk

Colorado keeps pushing the limits of the First Amendment — making it the testing ground for court cases involving free speech and religious freedom.

First came the state’s years-long persecution of baker Jack Phillips, who refused to violate his religious beliefs and use his business, Masterpiece Cakeshop, to create cakes for same-sex weddings and transgender-reveal parties.

The US Supreme Court rejected Colorado’s attempt to force Phillips to bake those cakes, asserting his First Amendment right to follow his faith during business hours.

Now, the court is considering Chiles v. Salazar, another Colorado case — this one challenging the state’s ban on so-called conversion therapy for minors, because it infringes on free speech.

Kaley Chiles is a licensed therapist in Colorado and a devout Christian.

She makes no secret of her faith; in fact, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal foundation defending her in court, argues that her patients “want counseling that is informed by and respects their common Christian convictions.”

Some seek help in breaking an addiction to pornography.

Others feel uncomfortable with their biological sex but, instead of wishing to change it, want to find peace with it.

Talking to young people in mental distress and helping them become comfortable with the body in which they were born would seem like an obvious, compassionate path for a therapist to take.

But in Colorado, it’s illegal “conversion therapy.”

That’s a scare term, evoking the cruel electroshock aversion methods used to “cure” gay people in the 1960s and 70s.

And it’s not at all what is happening in Colorado — or in Chiles’ practice, where she talks with her patients to help them get to the bottom of their problems.

Nobody is being forced into the conversations Chiles conducts in her office.

If people don’t want the kind of therapy she has on offer, they’re free to choose another practitioner.

But in Colorado and dozens of other states, the only therapy allowed for young patients experiencing gender dysphoria is therapy that encourages them to reject their biological sex entirely.

Now the Supreme Court must decide if Colorado’s law violates the First Amendment’s free-speech clause by impermissibly censoring a counselor’s viewpoint, or whether it legally regulates state-licensed conduct.

Chiles’ lawyer argues that Colorado’s law amounts to a viewpoint ban.

So far, lower courts have disagreed.

The Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Colorado’s ban “as a regulation of Chiles’ conduct, not speech.”

But no “conduct” is happening in Chiles’ office — just talking.

And the talking that occurs in other therapists’ offices can lead to far more dire “conduct.”

During Tuesday’s oral arguments in the case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked whether states can ban dieticians from telling “anorexic patients to engage in more restricted eating.”

But the dietician in Sotomayor’s example actually aligns far more closely to the therapists who abide by Colorado’s law.

When an anorexic child goes to a dietician, she isn’t “affirmed” in her delusions.

Instead, she’s told that her feeling of body dysmorphia is wrong and in need of curing.

Colorado children who present with gender-based body dysmorphia are never told they are deluded.

Instead, they are often put on hormones and sent toward life-altering surgeries by therapists who confirm a misguided belief that their bodies are defective.

Chiles is actually the dietician in Sotomayor’s example, telling the child her body is perfect as is.

She isn’t practicing “conversion therapy” — that’s what the therapists who affirm a child’s gender fantasies are doing.

Part of the problem is that activists keep insisting on tying together the LGB with the T.

There isn’t a lot of evidence that gay people can alter their attraction — but there’s quite a lot of proof that children who declare themselves “trans” won’t end up being trans at all.

In fact, a landmark study out of the Netherlands last year found the prevalence of “gender non-contentedness” drops steeply with age.

In other words, a child who thinks he’s the opposite gender at age 11 very often doesn’t at 25.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, noting that homosexuality was considered a mental disorder in the 1970s, asked Colorado’s attorney whether the state’s law would have prohibited a counselor from affirming that sexual orientation through talk therapy.

Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson, arguing to maintain the ban, confirmed that yes, the law would indeed have stopped a therapist in the 1970s from affirming gay people.

The irony.

“Bake the cake,” went the meme that grew out of the Masterpiece Bakeshop case.

Many conservatives and civil libertarians felt that if Colorado could force Phillips to act against his religious principles, it would be the first step on a slippery slope, and many other Americans would be involuntarily strong-armed into behavior they oppose.

Colorado wants Chiles to “say the words.”

She shouldn’t have to.

Karol Markowicz is the host of the “Karol Markowicz Show” and “Normally” podcasts.