Counseling under scrutiny

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 7th of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up, so-called conversion therapy laws.

This morning, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, the case of a Christian therapist suing the state over a law she says restricts her First Amendment rights.

REICHARD: We’ll cover the arguments in Monday’s Legal Docket, but today, conflicting visions for helping confused minors.

TREVOR PROJECT VIDEO: It's not about speech. It's about protecting young people from a junk science that is designed to shame them into denying that they really are.

REICHARD: That video is from the Trevor Project…an LGBTQ advocacy group pushing for laws on conversion therapy across the US.

TREVOR PROJECT VIDEO: Nearly half the states across the country have laws like Colorado's because every major medical and mental health association agrees this is harm not help.

EICHER: America’s leading medical, psychiatric, psychological and pediatric associations all support these laws. But what exactly do they do?

JOHNSON: The way state licensure works is it's not federally regulated. It's regulated by each individual state.

REICHARD: Dale Johnson is Executive Director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. He spoke with Washington Producer Harrison Watters about his organization’s amicus brief in the Chiles case.

JOHNSON: Conversion therapy was offered, first of all, not by Christians. Initially, it was offered at a time when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders had homosexuality listed as a mental disorder. And unfortunately, there were times in the past where Christians, you know, fell for that concept.

EICHER: Some therapists in the mid-20th century experimented with psychoanalysis techniques to jar patients out of same-sex attraction…including electro-shock and shaming. The numbers are murky on how many churches and Christian therapists adopted similar practices, but Johnson says some did indeed seek conversion of the mind instead of the heart.

REICHARD: When the American Psychological Association changed course and began discouraging conversion therapy, they didn’t limit it to specific techniques.

JOHNSON: They broaden semantically the concept of conversion therapy to include any what's now called sexual orientation change efforts.

REICHARD: That means the term now covers more than aversive methods like snapping rubber bands.

JOHNSON: It also now includes anything that we would do in discussing moral basis for sexuality with an individual who who finds himself at a confused position in their life.

EICHER: The first law banning conversion therapy for minors was established in California in 2012. While a few conservative states passed laws to prevent similar bans, 23 other states followed California.

WKBW: New York now the 15th state to ban conversion therapy.

WALZ: This law makes that not longer available in Minnesota.

NBC 5: Illinois is moving to make it illegal, but it’s still available nearby.

REICHARD: While these laws are focused on sexual orientation, many lump in another category: gender identity. And that concerns California attorney Erin Friday.

FRIDAY: None of these medical societies can actually even define what gender identity is without using the word gender, and they don't define gender.

REICHARD: Friday also leads Our Duty USA, a secular organization of parents concerned about their trans-identified children.

FRIDAY: We have a parent in our in our membership, whose daughter is anorexic and trans identified. She's afraid to get her any therapeutic help, because the mental health providers only focus on the trans identity.

EICHER: Colorado’s 2019 Minor Conversion Therapy Law forbids efforts to change sexual orientation and gender identity. But it does allow two forms of gender counseling: supporting “identity exploration and development” and assistance in gender transition.

FRIDAY: It requires a one-way path of support. We're going to support your belief, your self-loathing. We're going to say. Everything is wrong with you, but you can be fixed with drugs.

REICHARD: Friday notes that many states already ban torture and other practices that some conversion therapists practice…making expansive laws unnecessary. She suspects they serve a different purpose.

FRIDAY: Really, if we want to talk about conversion therapy, the transgender movement is actually trying to convert kids who will likely grow up to be same-sex attracted to be, quote, unquote, straight by changing their their exterior so that it looks like they are then in a heterosexual relationship.

EICHER: Friday and other amicus brief writers are encouraged to see counselor Kaley Chiles challenging Colorado’s law.

WONING: Chiles is not applying a different approach to her clients who identify as LGBT than those who do not.

EICHER: Elizabeth Woning is Executive Director of the CHANGED Movement.

WONING: …a growing worldwide network of people who have left LGBTQ culture and its kind of sociopolitical identities.

REICHARD: Woning and many of her associates are professing Christians, and their amicus brief tells the stories of several people with concerns about their homosexual behavior.

WONING: And so it was essential to them that they find a like minded counselor, because, frankly, both of them believed that their, their their spiritual life was in peril because of the behavior.

EICHER: Because Colorado’s law does not specify the practices it prohibits, Woning says the ban makes it difficult for young people of faith to get the help they want.

WONING: It's largely a restriction of of religious boundaries on sexual behavior in a in a professional counseling setting.

REICHARD: Colorado argues its power to regulate professional conduct extends to the counseling room. On the other side, liberal parents and Christian counselors alike fear the consequences of states regulating conversations about unhealthy sexual practices and thinking. Here’s Johnson again.

JOHNSON: It is a debate over religious ideology as to what's most most healthy for an individual in relation to their sexuality, so we’ve seen this growing for quite some time, knowing that we were on some kind of collision course…A win in this particular case, I think would be so encouraging to the church, and I think help to buffer the radicalism that we're seeing.

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