The U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down Colorado’s ban on something called conversion therapy.” When the Court announced it, media outlets on the left sprang into action.
The leftists used their headlines to broadcast dismay. National Public Radio (NPR) mourned that “Supreme Court Opens Door to Controversial Conversion Therapy.” Slate agonized over the fact that two liberal justices joined the conservatives whining that “How in the World Was the Supreme Court’s Awful Conversion Therapy Ruling 8-1?” Independent screamed, “Supreme Court Blasted for ‘Reckless’ Conversion Therapy Ruling That Will Have a ‘Catastrophic Fallout’ for LGBT+ Youth.” Mother Jones added a complaint about the timing, “On Trans Day of Visibility, Supreme Court Sides with Conversion Therapy.”
This decision is a major defeat for a movement that lives much more off the momentum of its social activism than the scientific evidence supporting its “gender-based” affirmations.
The Growth of a Leftist Movement
This fight is best seen in the context of the rise of the LGBT movement over the years.
As the sexual revolution grew during the late sixties, it was limited largely to heterosexuals. However, it provided a foundation on which an underground network of LGBT activists could build. Removing popular ideas of morality from heterosexual relationships soon had a similar effect on attitudes about homosexuals.
Until 1973, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. The change, as even its supporters admit, was not mandated by scientific proof, but by a popular vote at the 1973 American Psychiatric Association convention, following defeats in 1971 and 1972. In 1975, the less-prestigious American Psychological Association passed a similar resolution.
However, there was little scientific evidence justifying the LGBT position. Researchers sympathetic to “sexual minorities” struggled to find some physical structure that dictated same sex attraction. Had they succeeded, they would have proclaimed the news of such a “discovery” with great fervor. Their silence is their concession.
Lacking such proof, the activists turned to the political process. Here, they enjoyed great success. Books, movies and television programs presented homosexuality as another form of normal life. Pseudo-historians highlighted men and women of achievement, emphasizing unproven theories that they had been “closeted homosexuals.” Festivals of “Pride” began to occur in large cities.
The Leftist Myth of Conversion Therapy
As the movement developed, a series of ideas took hold. Movement supporters clung to the myth that homosexuality is a condition into which a person is born. Many medical organizations have adopted this idea, but the science does not support this.
The leftists dubbed any psychological process designed to help patients escape same sex attraction as conversion therapy. An undated article from Psychology Today defines it. Readers will have no trouble detecting the leftist bias.
“Conversion therapy is a pseudoscientific and discredited practice that attempts to force LGBTQ+ individuals to change their sexual orientation or gender identity and instead identify as heterosexual or cisgender. Because it is now understood that sexual orientation is not a choice or something that can be changed, so-called conversion therapy—sometimes called reparative therapy, ex-gay therapy, or sexual reorientation therapy—is not only ineffective, it is often actively harmful.”
To protect their dogmas, they tried to root this therapy out ruthlessly. Their lobbyists successfully persuaded many states to forbid it. According to the Movement Achievement Project, twenty-three states and the District of Columbia prohibit licensed therapists from using the treatment. Four other states severely restrict it.
Declaring the Science to be Settled
In 2021, Psychology Today took another swipe at it, this one authored by “experienced psychosexual and relationship psychotherapist,” Silva Neves. He reiterates much of their previous jargon and then works in a condemnation.
“People who believe in ‘conversion therapy’ are usually highly religious and promote it as a path to ‘freedom’ so that people can turn heterosexual, marry, and have children as God presumably intended. The practice of ‘conversion therapy’ varies from violent ‘exorcism’ and sexual or erotic aversion therapy to more subtle and insidious techniques that sound like legitimate therapy but instead represent pseudo-science.”
Thus, Dr. Silva brands any attempt to assist someone out of homosexuality as being among the “subtle and insidious techniques” that he decried. He begins his concluding paragraph with a loaded statement. “I know I am amongst a majority of therapists who will want a total ban of conversion therapy without any loopholes.” If we accept his assessment, the issue is closed. The “science” is settled. Any more questions would be harmful distractions.
New Evidence
Many scientists who doubted the LGBT consensus were nonetheless wary of conducting research that might contradict it. Medical research is very expensive. Much of it is done under the auspices of a university and funded by the federal government. Since liberals dominated both, they denied research applications that might shake the consensus.
Donald P. Sullins, Ph.D., is a distinguished senior fellow at the Institute for Human Ecology and teaches Epidemiology and Public Health at the Catholic University of America. However, he did most of his research work at an independent organization called the Ruth Institute. The title of his most recent work is a bit of a mouthful: Sex Differences in Reported Effectiveness and Psychosocial Effects of Therapy-Assisted Sexual Orientation Change.
Rather than adopting the common phrase, conversion therapy, Dr. Sullins prefers the more scientific and descriptive term, sexual reorientation therapy, which he defined as “voluntary therapeutic interventions for sexual orientation change.”
In an article on LifeSite News, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, president of the Ruth Institute, summed up the results of this complex project.
1. All the individuals in this sample had reduced their same sex behavior to “slight” or none.
2. Although most sought out supportive therapy, 41% changed their same sex sexual behavior with no sexual reorientation therapy.
3. Therapy affected men and women differently. Women were more likely to have strongly reduced same sex attraction than men, 88% v. 39%.
4. Therapy to change sexual orientation sometimes brings relief from other psychologically troubling issues.
Science Interfacing with the Legal World
Drs. Sullins and Morse are not the only doubters.
Kaley Chiles is a mental-health counselor in Colorado. She holds a Master’s Degree and a state-issued therapist’s license. She does not prescribe medicines, but she does counsel patients through a wide variety of issues. Her method is simple and common to her profession. When a new patient comes to her, she discusses their problems and goals. Then, she tries to guide them through the issues toward their self-determined objectives.
Over the course of her career, she has treated patients who felt homosexual inclinations, but who—usually for religious reasons—wanted to live a normal heterosexual life. She attempted to help them. However, according to the State of Colorado, this violated the conversion therapy ban.
A Controversial Decision
With the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom, she was able to take her case through Colorado’s courts and, ultimately, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is not a scientific body. Their task is to apply the Constitution of the United States. From its perspective, this case was relatively simple. Colorado forbade Kaley Chiles from freely expressing her beliefs. Moreover, the state was telling her to espouse beliefs that she did not hold. Both acts, eight of the justices held, are impermissible violations of the First Amendment.
Of course, no case that rises to the Supreme Court’s level is ever quite that simple. One aspect of that complexity is the extent to which the decision affects Colorado’s law and the laws of other states with similar statutes. This war is far from over, but the leftists lost significant ground that they thought was theirs.
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First published on TFP.org.