Editorial: Anti-conversion therapy law tramples free speech rights

With the turning of a page of the calendar to a new year comes a host of new laws on the books in Nevada, among them is a law banning therapists from engaging in something dubbed conversion therapy.

The new law makes it illegal for any psychotherapist in Nevada to provide conversion therapy to anyone under the age of 18. That is defined as “any practice or treatment that seeks to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a person.”

This therapy is barred “regardless of the willingness of the person or his or her parent or legal guardian to authorize such therapy.” The bill description justifies this usurpation of individual and parental rights by claiming the practice is ineffective and potentially harmful.

What is therapy? It is speech.

The bill specifically prohibits a professional health care provider from talking to an underage patient about whether their gender confusion is real or not, but just as specifically allows support or confirmation for “a person undergoing gender transition …” or provides “acceptance, support and understanding of a person or facilitates a person’s ability to cope, social support and identity exploration and development …”

One may not discourage a patient’s gender feelings but may encourage. Thus only speech that contains the government-approved content is permitted.

The courts have repeatedly ruled that laws that limit speech based solely on its content violates the First Amendment.

In a recent article, Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, reported that she had a male patient who between the ages of 3 and 5 increasingly played with “girl toys” and said he was a girl. She referred the parents and the boy to a therapist, who discovered that the boy had a younger special needs sister who required a significant amount of attention from her parents. The boy perceived that his parents preferred girls and thus he would become one.

“With family therapy Andy got better,” Cretella wrote.

In Nevada, that therapist now could have his or her license revoked for engaging in conversion therapy.

Presumably under this law, a therapist could be punished for telling a patient that 80 to 95 percent of all children who express feelings of gender dysphoria abandon those feelings upon maturity and that more than 80 percent of youth claiming to experience same-sex attractions in late childhood and adolescence identified themselves as exclusively heterosexual upon becoming adults.

Would telling a minor to wait and let nature take its course violate the law?

In the waning days of the 2017 legislative session the bill that is now law was amended in an attempt to protect religious counselors from being punished under the law, but it is a contortion that adds only confusion.

That amendment stated “there is nothing in this bill that regulates or prohibits licensed health care professionals from engaging in expressive speech or religious counseling with such children if the licensed health care professionals: (1) are acting in their pastoral or religious capacity as members of the clergy or as religious counselors; and (2) do not hold themselves out as operating pursuant to their professional licenses when so acting in their pastoral or religious capacity.”

So, which hat is the professional licensee wearing when talking to a child about gender? The pastor hat or the doctor hat?

Unfortunately, the federal circuit courts have rejected arguments that a similar California law violates both the free exercise of religion and free speech aspects of the First Amendment and the Supreme Court has thus far declined to hear appeals.

Now that the law is on the books in Nevada and livelihoods are in jeopardy, someone should take another stab at challenging the constitutionality of this law in court.

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Gov. Sandoval signs anti-conversion therapy law.

Editorial: Conversion therapy ban violates First Amendment

Gov. Brian Sandoval signed into law this past week a legislatively passed bill that makes it illegal for any psychotherapist in Nevada to provide conversion therapy to anyone under the age of 18.

Senate Bill 201 defines conversion therapy as “any practice or treatment that seeks to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a person.”

It states this therapy is barred “regardless of the willingness of the person or his or her parent or legal guardian to authorize such therapy.” The bill description justifies this usurpation of individual and parental rights by claiming the practice is ineffective and potentially harmful.

In a statement released to the press, the bill’s chief sponsor, state Sen. David Parks of Las Vegas, said, “Banning conversion therapy makes Nevada a safer place for children who are at a higher risk of anxiety, depression, substance abuse and even suicide.”

But what is therapy? These days it is not torture, electric shock or some emersion in aversion straight out of “A Clockwork Orange.” It is talk. You know, free speech.

Aversion therapy in “A Clockwork Organe”

But SB201 dictates that some speech is permissible while other speech is not. While it prohibits speech that might prompt a person to reconsider his or her sexual orientation or gender identity, it specifically allows support or confirmation for “a person undergoing gender transition …” or provides “acceptance, support and understanding of a person or facilitates a person’s ability to cope, social support and identity exploration and development …”

It is a one-way street. The courts have repeatedly ruled that laws that limit speech based solely on its content violates the First Amendment.

Presumably, if a professional merely talked to a minor about the results of years of research and studies and that talk resulted in a change of attitude about sexual orientation, that would be illegal under the law. Facts matter for naught.

Drs. Paul McHugh and Lawrence Mayer of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have written that 80 to 95 percent of all children who express feelings of gender dysphoria abandon those feelings upon maturity and that more than 80 percent of youth claiming to experience same-sex attractions in late childhood and adolescence identified themselves as exclusively heterosexual upon becoming adults. Would telling a minor to let nature take its course violate the law?

A late amendment to the law makes a ham-fisted attempt to protect religious counselors from being punished under the law, but it is so convoluted as to be indecipherable and totally useless. It tries to tiptoe around the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, but instead does a Mexican hat dance.

It states “there is nothing in this bill that regulates or prohibits licensed health care professionals from engaging in expressive speech or religious counseling with such children if the licensed health care professionals: (1) are acting in their pastoral or religious capacity as members of the clergy or as religious counselors; and (2) do not hold themselves out as operating pursuant to their professional licenses when so acting in their pastoral or religious capacity.”

They have to take off their professional licensee hat and put on their clerical hat.

A group called the Alliance Defending Freedom points out the Catch-22 in that.

Nevada law states that it is “unlawful for any person to engage in the practice of marriage and family therapy … unless the person is licensed …” the Alliance points out. “Telling licensed professionals that they can only engage in certain speech and activities if they do so outside of the umbrella of their license exposes them to ethical and legal liability. It places them between a rock and a hard place. If they do the counseling under their license, they violate SB 201; if they do it outside the scope of their license, they violate” another law.

What a tangled web lawmakers weave when they decide they know what’s best for young people, and they and their parents don’t.

The Latin phrase is in loco parentis, meaning “in the place of a parent.” The emphasis should be on the loco. Someone should challenge the constitutionality of this law in court.

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Here there be gods

Apparently when one is handed the power to write laws, one immediately becomes omniscient and omnipotent — knowing how everything should be done and how everyone should behave and do their jobs, even physicians.

On Friday the Senate Committee on Commerce, Labor and Energy approved Assembly Bill 105, which requires doctors and other health care providers to undergo ongoing suicide prevention training. Like doctors don’t go through enough training already and doctors have no incentive to keep their patients alive and paying the bills.

State law already requires a litany of training requirements, including how to spot terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, but it would change the law from encouraging ongoing suicide prevention and awareness training to requiring it.

 Meanwhile, the Assembly is expected to vote next week on a bill that would prohibit so-called “conversion therapy” for minors, even with their consent and the consent of their parents. Such therapy is intended to alter the minor’s sexual orientation — generally, we presume, from homosexual to heterosexual. Senate Bill 201 has already passed the state Senate on a vote of 15-5 despite concerns to any conversation with a young person about sexual orientation might to construed as therapy under the law.

While the law specifically prohibits treatment that “seeks to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a person,” despite their actual chromosome composition, it specifically allows support or confirmation for “a person undergoing gender transition …” or provides “acceptance, support and understanding of a person or facilitates a person’s ability to cope, social support and identity exploration and development …”

Our lawmakers know what’s best for you, no matter what you might think. For their next trick: Laying on of hands.

Two deeds illustrate how attitudes have changed drastically

de·vi·ant

adjective

departing from usual or accepted standards, especially in social or sexual behavior.

That’s one word we can strike from the dictionary. There are no usual or accepted standards.

The banner headline in today’s Las Vegas newspaper reports the state’s health insurance will start covering transgender procedures for public employees in July.

“The Public Employee Benefits Program board voted in November to remove language in the state’s self-funded and HMO plans that specifically excluded therapy for gender dysphoria,” the paper stated.

The paper quoted a member of that board as saying, “I am grateful that our plan documents … are going to be in line with current and modern thinking and respectful of our society.”

During the recent legislative session the state Senate voted 14-5 in favor of a bill that would have prohibited mental health providers from offering sexual orientation conversion therapy to a minor, regardless of that person’s willingness to undergo the treatment or the desires of his or her parents.

The bill defined “sexual orientation conversion therapy” as “any psychotherapy, counseling, hypnosis or other treatment or therapy aimed at altering the sexual or romantic attraction, desire or conduct of a person toward persons of the same sex so that such sexual or romantic attraction, desire or conduct is eliminated, reduced or redirected toward persons of the opposite sex.”

It got lost in the shuffle of the closing days of the session in the Assembly.

The state will pay for one conversion, but came close to prohibiting another conversion. Just an observation of the changing times and what is acceptable behavior and modern thinking. It is a one-way street.