(LifeSiteNews) — A Virginia court has struck down a state ban on talk therapy for unwanted homosexual inclinations or gender confusion, in what the Founding Freedoms Law Center is calling a “victory for free speech and religious freedom.”
In 2020, Virginia enacted a law banning “conversion therapy” of minors, defined as “any practice or treatment that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.” The law expressly allows, however, counseling to foster “acceptance” of “identity exploration and development,” i.e., homosexuality or transgenderism.
The Christian Post reports that Christian counselors John and Janet Raymond, heads of the Associate Counseling Center, filed a lawsuit against the ban as an infringement of their religious freedom to act on their beliefs about sexuality and gender. To avoid running afoul of the law, they had to almost completely stop seeing any patients below age 18.
Last month, the Raymonds and the Virginia Department of Health agreed to a since-revealed consent decree out of Henrico County Circuit Court, which determines that enforcing the prohibition against voluntary talk therapy between licensed counselors and willing minors would violate both the Virginia Constitution and the Virginia Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
It protects the Raymonds and any other “similarly-situated counselors,” but expressly does not protect “any practice or treatment other than talk therapy.” Each party agreed to pay their own legal expenses.
“This court action fixes a constitutional problem with the existing law by allowing talk therapy between willing counselors and willing patients, including those struggling with gender dysphoria,” responded Shaun Kenney, a spokesman for Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares. “Talk therapy with voluntary participants was punishable before this judgment was entered. This result — which merely permits talk therapy within the standards of care while preserving the remainder of the law — respects the religious liberty and free speech rights of both counselors and patients.”
Opponents of conversion therapy (also sometimes called reparative therapy) commonly elicit opposition to the practice by invoking fringe, abusive practices such as electric shock and other forms of physically harmful junk science. But in reality, modern reparative treatment consists largely of simple counseling, the effectiveness of which is backed by studies and testimony from those who have benefited.
Liberals have long opposed conversion therapy as an allegedly harmful, activist influence on impressionable children. In recent years, however, conservatives say their opposition has taken on a particularly hypocritical quality given left-wing activists’ widespread embrace of not only actively encouraging transgenderism in gender-confused children but also subjecting them to potentially irreversible surgical and chemical “transition” procedures.
The U.S. Supreme Court has announced that it will be reviewing the constitutionality of conversion therapy bans stemming from a legal challenge to a Colorado law.
