Conversion therapy and gender affirmative care

The Supreme Court appeared poised Tuesday [October 7] to back a free speech challenge to a Colorado law that bans conversion therapy aimed at young people questioning their sexual orientations or gender identities in a case likely to have national implications. So it appears likely the US Supreme Court will rule that states cannot ban therapists from trying to change kids' sexual orientation or gender identity, but they can ban doctors from providing treatments that affirm gender identity if it differs from that assigned at birth. If this seems inconsistent, that's because it is. If the idea is that states have the right to regulate professionals providing health care, banning treatments they deem harmful, shouldn't both types of bans be permitted? Or, if the idea is that people have a right to get the health care they want so long as it cannot be clearly shown to be harmful, shouldn't both types of bans be prohibited? I would go with the latter theory, because I am enough of an anarchist to generally prefer firmer limits on state power. The LGBTQ+ lobby sees conversion therapy as evil, and maybe it is. But some gay or trans kids would like not to be gay or trans, and I am not going to be the one to tell them they can't pursue that goal. The focus should be on what the person wants, and kids are people. For both conversion therapy and gender affirming care, any restrictions should be aimed only at making sure the patient isn't being forced into something they don't actually want -- in the case of kids, this would mostly be by parents. Just as we think kids having sex (with other kids or with adults) is fine as long as they have a clear path to opting out, kids freely choosing to embark on conversion therapy or gender affirming care should have that right. I am not saying clear path and free choice are easy things to determine, they aren't, especially since kids in general have so much less control over their own lives than they should have. But supporting clear path and free choice should be the goal. Once you invoke the protection of the nanny state, as the LGBTQ+ movement did in supporting bans on conversion therapy, you shouldn't be surprised when the nanny state winds up imposing whatever its own preferences happen to be. That's exactly what the Supreme Court is doing. It's uncomfortable with kids being gay or trans, so it likes conversion therapy and doesn't like gender affirming care, consistency be damned. Of course, it needs a legal argument to hang its hat on, and in this case it will be free speech. Conversion therapy is (mostly) talk therapy, while gender affirming care involves medications. But this is only a pretext. Health care professionals don't have a constitutional right to provide harmful advice, and the same medications states are banning for trans girls who want to appear more feminine and trans boys who want to appear more masculine are permitted when used to help cis boys appear more masculine or cis girls appear more feminine. If conversion therapy used medications (it sometimes does), or if gender affirming care didn't (it sometimes doesn't), the court would not reach an opposite result. It would find some other excuse for preferring treatment that affirms gender conformity over treatment that challenges it. News accounts like the one quoted above and linked below have called conversion therapy discredited, while critics of gender affirming care argue it is discredited. I have my own opinions about both. But I don't think either my opinion or the opinions of politicians should determine how gay or trans kids should go about getting the kind of health care they want. I am not convinced anyone can be counted on to made better decisions for those kids than the ones they make for themselves. Anything that helps insure they are empowered to make those decisions without interference from the state, their parents, me, or anyone else is good. When we invite the nanny state to substitute its opinion about how gay or trans kids should live their lives for the opinions of the kids themselves, we are asking for bad outcomes. hugzu ;-p (https site) Supreme Court skeptical of state bans on conversion therapy aimed at LGBTQ kids (NBC News) [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonimisierungsdienst]