Legalizing Evil: Free (Hate) Speech and the Threat to LGBTQ+ Kids’ Lives

Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States voted 8-1 to overturn Colorado’s ban on conversion “therapy” for minors. 

Conversion “therapy” is designed to turn queer people straight and cisgender. It is typically recommended and dolled out by Christian counselors, many of whom do not have psychological education. It uses practices widely considered harmful, even abusive, by the most highly-accredited psychology associations worldwide. It is due to this lack of professional support that I put therapy in quotations; it’s not real therapy.

The reasoning behind the court’s decision is the belief that banning conversion therapy violates the freedom of speech of the Christian counselors who wish to discuss this as a treatment option with their clients. I call bull on that argument, as there are standards of care across the fields of psychology and counseling that are there to ensure a client’s mental health isn’t compromised by the very person they’ve come to for mental health care.

There has always been a double standard regarding which speech is protected and which is censored. Why is this the kind of speech that gets to be protected?

For example, countless courts across the country have supported banning children’s books in which queer children or parents are shown. In those courts, the freedom of an author to depict a LGBTQ+ family unit isn’t considered free speech, and so it is censored.

But a counselor’s ability to use a practice discredited by every major psychology and counseling association worldwide is the thing we consider “free speech”? Bull. As Justice Jackson put it in her dissent, “the Court could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care administered by effectively unsupervised healthcare providers.”

Free speech loses its meaning when it’s only employed to protect things that cause harm. Conversion therapy is a wolf of harm disguised in a sheepskin of religiosity.

All you have to do is hear the stories of conversion therapy survivors to understand exactly how harmful this (mal)practice is.

Just ask the contributors to Lucas Wilson’s book Shame Sex Attraction. Or the participants in Cody Sanders’ study, Christianity, LGBTQ Suicide, and the Souls of Queer Folk. Or those interviewed for the Netflix documentary Pray Away. Or Julie Rodger’s story in her book Outlove. Or Brandan Robertson’s story in his latest book Queer & Christian. 

Do you want me to keep going? Because I can.

These stories are just the tip of the iceberg. And they are only the stories of those who survived. There are too many stories of harm done in the name of Jesus, no less, for any rational person to conclude that conversion “therapy” is anything other than what it actually is: abuse.

The fact that SCOTUS felt it wasn’t worth risking their necks to protect children from this harm speaks to just how much easier it has become to slap a Christian sticker on any behavior to justify it legally. But as I reminded my congregation in a recent sermon, legality and morality are not synonyms. Conversion “therapy” is evil; its legality doesn’t change that.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” (Proverbs 18:21). When will we decide life is the fruit we want, that life is valuable enough to protect?

None of this (hate) speech is free. LGBTQ+ children are paying and will pay the price for SCOTUS’s actions. It’s costing them their lives.

As we approach Resurrection Sunday, we need to be reminded of Jesus’s call to abundant life. We cannot join Jesus in the call to abundant life if we are committed to the industry of death, no matter if that death comes in the form of bombs, war or “therapy” sessions.

If you or your congregation want to support LGBTQ+ folks in light of these recent events, Cody Sander’s recent article offers tangible, actionable steps you can take. 

Please, don’t be silent. Your silence is complicity, driving nails through the wrists of these LGBTQ+ kids our country has decided to crucify.

Choose life, beloved. Choose life.