Vulnerable children, harmful laws

It’s the nation’s largest gender-transition clinic—known for putting vulnerable kids on puberty blockers and hormones and inflicting lifelong harm. But as of July 22, the disgraced Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has finally shut its doors. Praise be to God.

The momentous closure comes after the Trump administration issued an executive order vowing to defund doctors who experiment on kids.

That would be children like Calista. At age 13, Calista was told she was a boy and encouraged to socially transition. Without ever exploring her mental health struggles or the fact that she’d been sexually abused for years as a child, her doctor put her on testosterone at age 16. Without even an office visit or follow-up phone call, Planned Parenthood continued to prescribe her testosterone, and at age 20, a doctor surgically removed her healthy breasts.

Calista is one of more than 5,000 American kids who have been fast-tracked onto the conveyor belt of irreversibly damaging drugs and surgeries. Yet in 23 states, the law prevents minors like Calista from getting the counseling they need to address their underlying fears, and often trauma, to find peace with their bodies, leaving thousands of children and families in darkness.

One such state is Colorado. State law prevents young people and their families from freely talking to a counselor about their struggles with gender dysphoria in a way that helps them grow comfortable with their bodies. But if the goal is to push a young child toward dangerous, life-altering transition drugs and surgeries? Colorado is all for it.

Consider licensed Colorado counselor Kaley Chiles. Kaley wants all her clients to live full and flourishing lives. She knows that forcing a child down a one-way path toward drugs and surgeries is not how therapeutic relationships should form. And this wouldn’t happen in any other area of care—for example, those who’ve suffered trauma or those who struggle with addiction or eating disorders. Kaley wants young people like Calista to be free to talk to a counselor and explore the roots of why they might be experiencing discomfort with their bodies.

Kids like Calista and their parents—and there’s a growing number of them—seek out counselors like Kaley, knowing they’ll listen as their children work through their fears, anxiety, and other thoughts and emotions that often underly the desire to identify as the opposite sex.

Yet Colorado is denying children and their parents this opportunity by banning counselors like Kaley from even having these conversations with them. This law hurts children and parents and violates free speech under the First Amendment.

The government has no business censoring private counseling sessions or denying children the opportunity to pursue full and flourishing lives. That’s why my firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, is taking Kaley’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court. This fall, the court will hear Chiles v. Salazar and decide whether young people will be free to talk to Kaley about their struggles and have her help in pursuing the goals they desire.

This is critical because, when children suffer confusion about their sex, parents often face a major hurdle: They can’t find a licensed counselor who helps kids process their fears, navigate mental health challenges, and find peace with their bodies.

Erin, a Colorado mother, explained how “it took several weeks to find a counselor who was open to the idea that transitioning a 12-year-old without a gender dysphoric history might not be the best approach.” To her dismay, the counselor ultimately refused to take her daughter as a patient out of fear of losing her license because of Colorado’s counseling censorship law.

Tammy in Wisconsin also struggled to find a counselor for her daughter who would help her process her confusion and discomfort with her sex. Same with Dan and Jennifer in Michigan: “Multiple counselors told Dan that, although they would like to help, [Michigan’s counseling censorship law] prevented them from doing so.”

No state should fight against parents desperately seeking counseling conversations to help their child. Nor should any state tell a professional counselor like Kaley that she can’t talk to kids about avoiding the destructive, life-altering harms that accompany the path of so-called gender transition.

Christians should pray for more loving counselors like Kaley to help care for kids in crisis. And we should rejoice at the closure of a clinic that fed so many young people to a predatory industry. Providentially, Calista and her husband came to faith in Christ and were recently baptized. We must not give up until this senseless, evil war on our children has ended.