Supreme Court rules against Colorado ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ+ kids
apnews.com
The Supreme Court has ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado, one of about two dozen states that banned the discredited practice.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado, one of about two dozen states that ban the discredited practice.

An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide if it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

  • Riskable@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    The US is not a theocracy. Conservatives want it to be one—in theory—but they would never agree on which religion would be the one true religion.

    You’d think they’d settle on something simple and nebulous like, “Christianity” but the moment they started trying to define that in law the whole concept would fall apart because there’s way too many completely incompatible differences between Christian sects. Not to mention the fact that Mormons (and other niche sects) consider themselves to be Christian while huge swaths of people consider them to be anything but.

    The best they can ever get away with is what they’ve got now: Completely unconstitutional (IMHO) exceptions in various laws for “genuinely held religious beliefs.”

    Remember: The conservatives on the supreme court really do think that if a doctor has a genuine religious belief that someone should die from a treatable condition, they should not be held to account for letting that person die.

    I fantasize about one of these justices going to the hospital for an emergency heart condition and having the doctor refuse to treat them because of a truly genuine, deeply-held religious belief that conservatives should just die from such things since they don’t believe in medicine or science in general.