The Supreme Court is reviewing a Colorado law that regulates mental health practitioners by banning conversion therapy. While the law is being challenged, and rightfully so, on First Amendment grounds, it also reveals the confusion inherent in gender ideology.

The law bars mental health providers from using treatment methodologies that attempt to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” of minors. This includes attempts to “change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce” same-sex attraction.

First Amendment problems are obvious. The plaintiff who brought the lawsuit that is before the Supreme Court states her clients seek out counseling methods legally defined as “conversion therapy.” Should the state have the ability to bar mental-health professional from providing therapies that some individuals believe improve their mental well-being?

From choice to control

This law is indicative of how the modern Left has moved from championing choice to seeking absolute control. Mental health is a field of study and practice that is impossible to disentangle from speech. Colorado would like the public to believe its law is no different than other public safety regulations common place in the medical industry. 

But mental health is different from surgery. Methods that work for one person may be maladaptive to another. Indeed, a plain reading of the statute could open LGBTQ practitioners to liability. If mental-health providers are barred from attempting to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” are those who recommend gender transition violating the law by seeking to change an individual’s gender identity from “cis” to “trans”?

The obvious answer to this is “no,” because the purpose of this law is to intimidate, control, and silence critics of gender ideologies. The state of Colorado has no intention of applying equal standards to mental-health providers. Instead, providers with left-wing viewpoints will be shielded from liability despite the fact that standard treatment for gender dysphoria is a form of conversion therapy.

It is hard to argue, for example, that Jazz Jenning’s gender expression and identity were not altered by the therapeutic methods used, including the use of cross-sex hormones.

Confusion over clarity

Colorado’s law is yet another example of how the left prefers confusion over clarity. Despite the plain reading of the law implicating common mental-health protocols, it is easily understandable to the public that the state intends to target religious individuals and other Americans who dissent from the Left’s viewpoints regarding gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.

This creates problems for individuals who seek access to the mental health care of their choosing. Despite arguing that conservative states, such as Tennessee, want to constrict choice banning healthcare providers from surgically altering the bodies of healthy minor children, those on the Left champion a law that bars mental-health providers from using speech based/talk therapy methods for minors who may genuinely want to alter aspects of their sexual expression they view as unwanted.

The Supreme Court is addressing Colorado’s law on a First Amendment basis, but the cultural and social implications are vast. If the Left believes -- as it currently does -- that gender identity is fluid, then laws such as Colorado’s become incoherent and represent nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to weaponize the state against dissidents opposing left-wing orthodoxies.

For, if gender identity is fluid, why does it matter if individuals seek to alter their gender expression through therapy? And, if children can consent to gender transition, why are they unable to consent to conversion therapy?

Given the obvious First Amendment implications of Colorado’s law, there is reason to believe the Supreme Court will strike down this unconstitutional state statute, but the cultural war over gender ideology will rage on.

Leslie Corbly, author of Progressive Prejudice: Exposing the Devouring Mother, is an author, columnist, poet, and attorney.

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