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Now, while most people have very justifiably been focused on international news over the last two months, a lot has been happening domestically. On the legal front, case in point, the U.S. supreme Court has just issued a new landmark ruling. Specifically, in an 8 to 1 decision, the Supreme Court found that Colorado's ban on conversion therapy was unconstitutional and the ban violated the First Amendment rights of Christian therapists. Let's go through the details of this particular case together, because not only does Colorado have this law on the books. Well, had this law on the books, but also half the country does as well, including the District of Columbia. So let's discuss what it means for both Colorado as well as for everyone else in the whole country. And of course, if you appreciate content like this, please do smash those like and subscribe buttons, which occasionally helps the algorithm pick up the episode and share it out to ever more people. Thank you so much for that. Now, in terms of the backstory, in 2019, the Governor of Colorado signed into law a new bill which was officially titled the Prohibit Conversion Therapy for a Minor Act. What this new state level law did was that it prohibited licensed psychiatrists, as well as all other licensed mental health professionals from engaging in, quote, unquote, conversion therapy with patients who are under the age of 18. If they did so, if they engaged in conversion therapy, these professionals could be disciplined by their relevant licensing boards. They can have either their licenses taken away, as well as being forced to pay fines of upwards of $5,000 per offense. Now, within this context, within the context of this particular law, the definition of conversion therapy was written as follows. Quote, Conversion therapy means efforts to change an individual's sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex. Essentially, what this meant in practice was that if you were a psychiatrist within the state of Colorado and you had a young patient come in under the age of 18 who was experiencing gender dysphoria, you could do nothing other than affirm the new gender identity that they were now expressing. If you tried to dig out the roots of why they were doing this, you would likely be in violation of that law. Same thing. If somebody was coming in and questioning their sexuality, a therapist in Colorado would not be able to do anything other than affirm whatever that child was saying. Now, as you might imagine, there were Christian mental health professionals who did not really appreciate having the state forcing them to affirm something that they did not necessarily believe in. One of those people was named Kaylee Childs. She is a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs as well as a practicing Christian. Quote Ms. Kaylee Childs holds a master's degree in clinical mental health and provides exclusively talk therapy, no medications, physical interventions or coercive techniques. She does not approach sessions with predetermined outcomes. Instead, she listens to clients, including minors, as they articulate their own goals and works with them to pursue those objectives while respecting their autonomy. Many clients seek her out specifically for her faith integrated approach. Childs has said she believes people flourish when they live in alignment with God's design, including their biological, sexual. Some clients want support affirming their current identity, while others seek help reducing unwanted same sex attractions, changing behaviors or finding greater alignment with their bodies. And so, as you can imagine, given this style of practice, in the year 2019, when the state of Colorado implemented their new anti conversion therapy law, Ms. Childs said that it basically infringed on her ability to help minors who were struggling with gender dysphoria and as well as what was referred to there as unwanted same sex attraction. She added that quote, the law banning conversion therapy encourages young people to change their sexual orientation or gender identity away from the heterosexual norm and prohibits the provision of counseling for same sex desires or identification with the opposite gender. And so in the year 2022, Ms. Childs filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking a preliminary injunction for her own talk therapy practice. However, both the lower court as well as the appellate court found that she did have standing in the case, meaning she could bring the case forward. But they both denied her the relief that she was actually seeking. She appealed again all the way up to the US Supreme Court, who wound up accepting the case. Oral arguments were heard from both sides back in October. And then just a few days ago, the court ruled in favor of Ms. Kaylee Childs. Specifically, the court found that these conversion therapy bans that do in fact infringe on the First Amendment rights of mental health professionals. Now, the decision was almost unanimous. It was 8 to 1, with only justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. However, writing for the majority, you had Justice Neil Gorsuch say that the Colorado law regulated speech based on viewpoint, which is unconstitutional. Quote, Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country. It reflects instead a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth. Laws like Colorado's, which suppress speech based on viewpoint, represent an egregious assault on both commitments. The majority opinion then goes on to basically say that by permitting counselors to affirm gender transitions while at the same time prohibiting them from helping their clients to align themselves more with their biological sex was a clear example of discriminating on, well, for, for one viewpoint over another. Quote, speech does not lose constitutional protection merely because the government labels a treatment or therapeutic modality. The First Amendment is no word game. And as such, this Colorado state level law was found to be unconstitutional. Now, in terms of the next steps for this case, the case itself was sent back down to the lower courts to be resolved in line with this new ruling, which means that they still have some technical hoops to jump through, but they ultimately have won the case because that's what the US Supreme Court said and everything below that has to be in line with that ruling. Regardless if you don't live in Colorado, this ruling does have nationwide implications because as I mentioned at the top of the episode, these similar conversion therapy bans for minors, they're currently on the books in 23 different states as well as the District of Columbia. And according to Mrs. Childs lawyer, this ruling from the US Supreme Court will lead all those different state level laws to also get struck down. Quote, Childs attorney Jim Campbell of Alliance Defending Freedom said the Supreme Court's ruling in his client's case, which was based on her engaging in voluntary conversions, will lead to similar laws in other states being struck down. During a teleconference after the ruling, he said the court said laws like these that discriminate based on viewpoint states single out a particular perspective for silencing that those laws have to be subject to the highest, highest First Amendment scrutiny. And so that's going to apply to every single one of these laws around the country. And the one thing we know is that whenever a court has applied that kind of heightened scrutiny to one of these laws, it has struck it down. On the flip side, however, you have the Attorney general of Colorado who wasn't too pleased with the Supreme Court decision and released a statement following reading as the high court's decision was a setback for Colorado's efforts to protect children and families from harmful and discredited mental health practices. For generations, states have set and enforced standards to ensure that licensed professionals provide safe and appropriate care. We strongly disagree with the court's reasoning. Conversion therapy is a practice that every major medical and mental health association in the country has Rejected as unsafe and ineffective. Now, in order to bring a bit more color into the story, if you would like to see how these conversion therapy bans for minors really work in practice, then I would highly recommend that you check out a documentary film that the Epoch Times recently put out called Gender Transformation. It's a docudrama which exposes this pipeline that exists between the school system, the medical system, and the psychiatric profession, which is basically. Well, which has led to a surge in the number of kids identifying themselves with the trans ideology. That docudrama, it basically shows how the hands are really tied of mental health counselors in states like Colorado and California, where basically when the kid comes in suffering from mental health problems, as well as gender dysphoria, they are quite literally, legally not allowed to do anything other than to affirm them. And then to help them go further down that particular road, I'm gonna show you a trailer for that film because it's a documentary in the sense that it has a lot of interviews with professionals, but. But it's also docu drama because it actually shows a case which is based on a real life case of a mother who was slowly losing her child in this process. And the system, she realized, was completely set against her because she tried to get the counselor involved. But again, the counselor's hands were tied because of laws like this. And then when she herself tried to intervene, she actually had the cps. The Child Protective Services called on her because even she herself, as a parent, was not allowed to engage in a version of conversion therapy. Here's a trailer for that movie.