The Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 last month that a 2019 Colorado law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ minors violates the constitutional right to free speech. At issue in the case of Chiles v. Salazar was a statute prohibiting therapists from engaging in “any practice or treatment . . . that attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”
While the days of gay people being forced to undergo institutionalization, electroshock treatment, or chemical castration to “correct” their homosexuality are thankfully over, a form of talk therapy claiming to help individuals “eliminate unwanted sexual attractions” and “grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body” persists. However harmful such ideas may be, Justice Neil Gorsuch was correct when he wrote in his majority opinion that outlawing their expression constitutes an “egregious assault” on the First Amendment.
