Amid a wave of anti-trans attacks coming from Trump and the ultra-right, the Supreme Court has announced that it will hear a case challenging a Colorado law which prevents licensed therapists from practicing so-called conversion therapy on minors. Conversion therapy purports to change a person’s sexual orientation from LGBTQ to heterosexual.
The case, known as Chiles v. Salazar, argues that the ban on conversion therapy is a violation of free speech and freedom of religion. The plaintiff, Kaley Chiles, is being represented by the ultraconservative Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing religious legal organization which has led legal efforts to attack everything from abortion rights to same-sex marriage to access to contraception.
Colorado is one of 22 states, as well as the District of Columbia, which have banned the practice of conversion therapy on minors.
At the same time, GOP legislators in Kentucky have made overturning the state’s ban on conversion therapy a political priority. We should note that this mission has been carried out in a largely secretive and undemocratic manner–perhaps due to the fact that opinion polls have shown conversion therapy to be largely unpopular among U.S. voters. In 2023 the Supreme Court declined to hear a similar challenge to Washington state’s ban on conversion therapy for minors.
It is important to clarify what exactly conversion therapy is in order to illuminate what is at stake here. Conversion therapy is a euphemism for various forms of medicalized interventions, ranging from talk therapy to aversive and punitive behavior modification to surgical procedures, that are carried out with the explicit aim of ‘converting’ someone away from being LGBTQ. It is a form of physical and mental torture.
Being queer is not a mental illness!
Conversion therapy relies on unscientific and bigoted assertions that being LGBTQ is a pathology which needs to be cured. At the same time, the Trump administration has put forward definitions of ‘biological sex’ which are similarly unscientific and rooted more in bigotry than reality.
It is worth noting that up until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality to be a mental illness. However, through militant queer struggle in the years following the Stonewall Rebellion, this classification was successfully challenged and overturned.
So, what does science actually say? Studies have shown that,
relative to LGBTQ individuals who did not undergo [conversion therapy], recipients experienced serious psychological distress (47% v. 34%), depression (65% v. 27%), substance abuse (67% v. 50%) and attempted suicide (58% v. 39%).
In essence, the Chiles case seeks to legalize the medicalized torture of LGBTQ people. While the case does not originate within the Trump administration, it is a component of the broader billionaire’s agenda to overturn the victories of the people’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Overturning bans on conversion therapy for minors is part of the billionaires’ agenda
The Supreme Court’s decision to hear this case comes amid severe attacks on the rights of trans youth to access gender-affirming health care. While such health care has demonstrated to improve mental health outcomes for trans children, the ultra-right continues to strip families of their ability to access that care.
In this climate, a potential legalization of conversion therapy could mean that the only services available to LGBTQ children in many states across the country would be ones that seek to forcibly prevent them from living as who they are.
Remarkably, a 2022 study demonstrated that conversion therapy costs the United States more than $9 billion annually. Most critically, it was found that providing affirmative health care for LGBTQ children is significantly more cost-effective than conversion therapy. In fact, affirmative care was estimated to save nearly $2 billion compared to providing no therapy whatsoever. It is clear that LGBTQ-affirming health care saves lives AND money!
The threat posed by this case is significant. There are currently no nationwide anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people, and the far-right is seeking to eliminate the patchwork of protections which do exist in states across the country. Validating anti-LGBTQ bigotry is one component in an attempt to divide the working class to prevent us from uniting against our true enemy, the bosses.
When the freedom for LGBTQ people to determine their own gender and sexuality is denied, everybody’s freedom to be who they are is denied. All of us must reject this latest attack on the LGBTQ community and fight for a society where all of us, in all our diversity, are respected and cherished for who we are.