Posted on 03/13/2019 2:40:02 PM PDT by Coleus
Licensed therapists in New Jersey have been prohibited since 2013 from engaging in conversion therapy, an attempt to change a child’s gender identity or their sexual orientation from gay to straight.
But encouraged by a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year, Liberty Counsel, a national religious legal organization, just asked the nation’s highest court for a chance to prove New Jersey’s law violates the free speech rights of counselors who believe the treatment works.
The ruling in June struck down portions of a California law that required crisis pregnancy centers to tell pregnant women about the availability of publicly-funded family-planning services, including abortions. The court ruled the law violated the First Amendment rights of the pregnancy center owners and employees, who oppose abortion.
“California cannot co-opt the licensed facilities to deliver its message for it,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the 5-4 majority opinion. He called the requirement for unlicensed centers “unjustified and unduly burdensome.”
Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, said he’s hopeful the high court will see the same free speech violations in the conversion therapy ban.
“This is government interfering with the private counseling relationship...without considering facts and individual people,” said Staver, which also represented the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, which prevailed in the California case.
“We have clients in New Jersey and other places that have been affected by this decision,” Staver added. “This is a fundamental violation of autotomy. There is no other area of counseling this happens.”
Liberty Counsel submitted the petition to the Supreme Court on Feb. 11.
If the high court takes the case, the ruling would strengthen or strike down the ban in 15 states and Washington D.C. The court could also decline to accept the case, leaving the laws intact.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Where I live (Allegheny County, PA) the County Council is attempting to impose this same ban.
Apparently at the urging of some gay 19-year old who did not like the therapy his parents sent him for. Hence he feels two-bit county government should override everyone’s parental rights.
And it appears they are going to try and do just that.
Stick to maintaining parks and patching potholes.
If they can push going straight to gay in kindergarten...
They already are.
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