US Supreme Court snubs challenge to gay 'conversion therapy' ban in Washington state

negativenull@startrek.website to politics @lemmy.world – 105 points –
reuters.com
  • The Supreme Court upheld Washington state's law banning "conversion therapy" for minors, despite dissent from three conservative justices.
  • An appellate panel struck down local bans on conversion therapy in Florida, deeming them an unconstitutional restriction on counselors' speech.
  • Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the court should have taken up the case and considered the First Amendment challenge to the law.
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Counselors' first amendment rights aren't being affected; they can say anything they want. They're just not allowed to treat minors with treatment methods that have been proven to be ineffective at best and harmful at worst. Your first amendment rights don't apply to treatment periods; there are plenty of restrictions on your speech in a professional setting like that, and you should lose your license if you violate those rules. Those aren't state laws though, just silly old APA standards.

No, you're wrong. Also, if you're allergic to peanuts, you need to stop being allergic to peanuts. It's my first amendment right to try force-feeding peanuts to people who are allergic to peanuts and call it medicine.

You shouldn't have chosen to be allergic to peanuts. That is on you.

There is nothing to "treat". Homosexuality is not a disease.

Conservatism is a disease, though. Maybe we can treat that instead.

Of fucking course Thomas thinks that restrictions on giving out medically unsound advice about ineffective treatments is a "First Amendment issue."

Send him to a Conversion Camp for a month if that's what he thinks. Fuck him.

This is a nice signal that Gorsuch and Barrett do have some level of sincerity in their beliefs about powers reserved to states.

This isn't to say that they're good, but they operate on a very different level than Alito and Thomas, whose primary ideology seems to be whatever owns the libs the most.