If no one else has said it, I will: that ruling will HURT PEOPLE. It'll hurt kids who are trying to discover who they are. It'll hurt adults who get told they MUST undergo such "therapy" because reasons. It will hurt families and friends and uncounted others.
On a lot of issues in the current climate, abortion/maternity, LGBTQ, disabilities and employment, the conservative thinking really boils down to “conform to our strict narrow standards or die.” So many of their “solutions” to perceived problems are cruel and dangerous and have lead to many unnecessary deaths, and they are aware of the death they cause and continue to push for the same “solutions”. Many of the problems are of their own making even, then they push for deadly solutions. I mean, we know that there is a faction of white supremacists you in the conservative movement (if not the majority of whole of the movement) so it tracks that they want anyone who doesn’t conform to die. They don’t want to share the world with anyone not lily white and only want women because they can’t reproduce without us.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the USA hates women and children. Especially children after witnessing the events of the last year(s). Come to think of it, we’ve never cared about children:
"MAGA hates the things they hate more than they love the things they love."
To "own the libs", MAGA would absolutely harm their own children, just like they harmed their elderly (remember stacked coffins in mass graves?) because they saw us Dems getting vaccination protections against Covid.
Apparently, seeing hundreds of thousands of elderly MAGA die horribly (and alone) somehow..."owned" us?
(FWIW, even the MAGA "generous" enough to allow us to live for the maximum "five years" have now been proven wrong, but I'm not hearing a lot about it.)
I had "gender affirming treatment" as a minor...all the way back in 1974. (And I am aware that Conversion Therapy is very different.)
Of course, no one knew what an EVIL MONSTER i (apparently) was back then...
(I can't even imagine a life without having had that very necessary, very simple medical treatment. Tragically, brutality is now part and parcel of controlling a population of innocent people with medical needs.)
The simple treatment gave me a life I never dreamed I might have, even including marriage (to a WOMAN, no less!) I confess gratitude that my issues never involved gender dysphoria. Not because of any bias, but simply because life is already quite complicated enough.
Thank you, Troublesh00ter. Your kindness (and everyone's) means more than might be imagined.
If it were 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 words, then I could see the possible point of allowing it under the First Amendment. But those words are so cruel, hateful, and bullying that it will increase suicidal ideation among its targets, the opposite of what therapy is supposed to do. That is why it shouldn't be allowed, because it is not only words, even when the "therapist" is just talking.
How many bigoted parents are going to try to "fix" their children only to bury them? One is too many.
Remember Nex Benedict? Amateur bullying killed them. Now the professionals will be doing the bullying.
Why do you suppose we do NOT hear of the free-speech restrictions based on the "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" exception on practically a DAILY basis?
Even MAGA pretends to understand things it hears constantly...
MAGA only wants to restrict everyone else's speech. They will do some very impressive mental gymnastics to say that speech they don't like falls under the restrictions already in place. They will do the same impressive mental gymnastics to say that those same restrictions apply to their speech.
I cannot add anything to what hemant has said. I’m not even going to try. This is not a free speech issue, this is a professional conduct issue. And gay kids are going to pay for it. Like the abortion decision, it simply ignores everything else in favor of a predetermined outcome.
I hope every gay person harmed by this as the courage to sue these assholes into next week.
The Alliance Defending Freedom’s comment “Kids deserve real help affirming that their bodies are not a mistake and that they are wonderfully made.” Is so nonsensical, rife with Christian flowery language that means nothing important. Compared to Brown-Jackson’s dissent or the church state separation groups’ statements, it’s like a toddler debating a renowned physics scientist about the workings of physics. (You know what I mean, an expert in their field).
Who is saying an LGBTQ person isn’t “wonderfully made” or that their body is a mistake? Is this how they speak to cancer patients? That they need to accept their cancer as godswill? Or say, a child born without legs, or someone with Ehler’s Danlos Syndrome, or any other condition? We acknowledge the disease or condition and make attempts to help the person with them live their best lives. We don’t bully them into pretending they don’t have the problems or that they can’t make adjustments to their bodies to improve their lives, we don’t just torture them into little boxes of acceptable standards not based in reality. We do work to make other people’s disabilities more palatable for non-disabled people to be around, but that is something progressive society is working on.
I’m sorry, but whenever religious groups and people start trying to debate, they just use a whole other language, and super shallow ideas with black and white thinking and they are always out of their depth. Like yesterday’s bot, “discernment matters”, what do you mean, explain where the discernment that we had detailed wasn’t used or what you mean beyond “discernment matters.” Bumper sticker debate is only paper thin.
To expand on a thought from downthread, for the free speech absolutists out there:
Some viewpoints 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be banned. Playing chicken with the Tolerance Paradox is how we ended up in this stupid ditch in the first place. If Nazis were not allowed to march, they would not have been able to march their way into our halls of government; if hate speech against vulnerable minorities were actually illegal, politicians would not have been able to build their campaigns around it... but they did, and they have. If we somehow manage to defeat the fascist MAGA movement, secure sufficient majorities in Congress, and maybe someday get control of the Supreme Court, we are going to have to step the fuck over that line to keep another movement just like it from wrecking everything again in a generation or two. We need stronger hate speech laws. We need to make it a crime to display certain symbols, to fly certain flags, and to advocate for certain worldviews.
Democracy has clearly demonstrated that it needs to have its hand held to keep it from wandering into traffic. That sucks- it really, truly does- but it's the truth. We are not mature enough, as a society, to be trusted with the responsibility of being able to say whatever we want, whenever we want. It 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be illegal for Nazis to march. It 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be illegal to run a campaign on demonizing immigrants and trans people. And yes, it 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be illegal to run a conversion therapy practice- and it should be illegal not only because it's fucking malpractice that demonstrably does harm, but also because the 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘴 behind it are hideously, egregiously wrong. Mere exposure to those ideas does harm- not just the practices that stem from them, but the 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴. That those who hold them are permitted to spread them freely makes the world less safe for those they target.
"But what if the other side does it too," you say? 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵. Look at what they've done to Stonewall, for fuck's sake, or to the Smithsonian. Look at their "don't say gay" laws, at their bathroom bans, at Trump's weaponization of the DoJ to prosecute political opponents, at them banning news outlets from the White House and the Pentagon if they don't suck Trump and Hegseth's dicks hard enough... the Nazis are 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 working to persecute and ban viewpoints they disagree with. We need to be willing to get down in the mud, the moment we have political power again, and 𝘣𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬. If we don't, they will; we know they will, because they're doing it right now. The high road you are still so insistent on taking leads over a cliff. We know where the road leads because 𝘸𝘦'𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘧.
But I know I'm just barking at the walls. I know we aren't going to learn our lesson. If we survive the landing, we're just gonna go and drive off that same cliff again, and again, and again, secure in the delusion that if we just take that high road 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, it'll magically lead somewhere better than it has before. It won't.
Let's play the children's cut the cake game. Only instead of "you cut, I pick first", it will be "you play Legislature/Judicial and decide what powers government has to ban speech; then I play Executive and decide what speech to use them on." Oh and for purposes of this game (only), assume that I don't like you or your positions. Muhahaha.
Okay with that set-up, make your first move: what banning powers are you going to give me?
See the problem? It frankly baffles me that liberals are advocating for government speech bans with Trump in the WH, the GOP in charge of Congress, and a 6-3 conservative majority of SCOTUS. When you say "some viewpoints should be banned," you do realize who would be in charge of deciding what viewpoints gets banned, don't you?
(Sidebar: this particular case isn't a good free speech one. I have no problem with Colorado requiring doctors to avoid certain medical practices in order to keep their license. That isn't a free speech issue because the doctor is still perfectly able to voice their views, write books about it, advocate for changes to licensing etc...They just can't practice that technique on patients in the state until their advocacy wins. But being able to advocate for it fulfills the 1a requirement.)
Who 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be in charge of it? Bit of a tense gaffe, that.
You're coming at this as though censorship of left-leaning views by a conservative government isn't something that is already happening. It 𝘪𝘴 already happening, with 𝘢𝘯𝘥 without the support of the law.
We know exactly what it would look like, because it's in the news every day. We know what forms of speech they'd go after first, because they're several lines down the target list. This isn't a thought experiment anymore. We know where we are, and we know how we got here. Where we are is the teetering edge of fascist oblivion, and how we got here is that we let the fascists tell any bigoted lies they pleased until 49% of voters either believed them or just stopped caring what was real and what wasn't.
I also used to think that the answer to bad speech was more good speech, but the reality is that it is easier for a lie to gain traction than it is for the truth to topple it. The truth needs help. We aren't in a position to do anything about this now, but sooner or later, however many years it takes, we will hold the levers of power again- and when we do, we'd better have a good think about how to prevent another Trump. Part of that effort 𝘩𝘢𝘴 to be a far more robust set of hate speech laws, 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘩- because without the bigotry on full blast, there's no MAGA.
We need to change how we think about some of our core values as a country, or this 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 all happen again. Fascists fight dirty, and we're going to have to fight dirty too if we want to stop them from making another power play. There are only two real options here- either we start lying our asses off too, and put the final nail in the coffin on politics having any connection to reality... or we get out the duct tape and 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 the fascists shut the fuck up, when and if we have the power over them.
When a product proves itself to be harmful or defective, we ban its sale and pull it off store shelves. It's time to do the same with the marketplace of ideas, and work to take the demonstrably bad ideas out of circulation. This country's shit-stupid electorate simply can't be trusted not to grab another jar of fascism on its way to the checkout otherwise.
Exactly. New horrible ideas are bad enough, but... old horrible ideas that we've seen play out in practice are a very different thing. We 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 where Nazi ideology leads. The evidence is on film; the death camps are still standing as silent witness to that ideology's millions of victims. We don't need to protect Nazi speech. It's never going to contribute anything to our world but more misery.
Yes, it's dangerous to start down the road of banning any old thing that threatens to upset the status quo. I don't know where, exactly, the line should be drawn... but it isn't hard to recognize at least a few points of view that should definitely not be allowed to propagate. We have, for example, more than enough historical evidence to conclude that fascism, in any of its forms, is too dangerous to be given a public platform. It appeals too easily to the ignorant and the vicious among us, and we know that it leads at the very least to tyrannical dictators, and at the worst, wars of conquest and acts of genocide. We should have acted on that knowledge and taken steps to prevent it from ever gaining power here, rather than defending fascists' "right" to be loudly and proudly terrible.
The goal of religious extremism has always been the same, they want to psychologically torment gay kids, so they’ll stay in the closet. As long as the kids stay in the closet they can pretend that homosexuals don’t exist. How much damage they do to children, is irrelevant. Keep in mind these are the same people that sat in conventions and said AIDS was God’s final solution. These are the same people that protested the funerals of families who were laying their loved ones to rest, who had died of AIDS.
And just a sidenote these are the same people that voted a rapist and pedophile into the White House. Those actions alone promote more rape and pedophilia.
So LGBTQ kids DON'T have a right to free speech/free expression, cristers? Is that how the game is played?
Tell you what, let's flip the script and practice conversion therapy on Christians to rid them of their delusions about supernatural beings and realms when there is no evidence for either. How'll that be?
How's that? Persecution, you say? Oh, that's right. Christians are only okay with persecution so long as THEY are the ones doing it.
If we began promoting DECONVERSION THERAPY on Christians, claiming (truthfully!) that they have been bamboozled by their pastors and priests and we provide relief from their brainwashing and indoctrination, they would scream PERSECUTION at the top of their lungs before we could finish a sentence.
"We're through the looking glass, here, people. White is black, and black is white." Boy, howdy, are we ever.
To them children are chattel, they don't see them as potential adults with needs of their own who need tools to cope with reality. They want to keep them ignorant so they remain in their tribe.
That’s exactly what the US needs MORE suppression of being who you are. It’s worked out really well for us and our so-called collective morality so far. It’s dangerous, abusive, and will continue to plaque our society until we stop compromising with religious fascists at every turn. Zero lessons have been learned.
Apparently I'm still too pissed off to form a rational thought about this. There are no words for how disappointed I am in Sotomayor and Kagan. The conservative majority, I expect to be stupid and evil; they pull this shit all the time. Those two, I thought better of. At least one justice saw through the bullshit... for all the good it does. I'm thinking that, if we ever manage to wrest control of the court and return it to reason and good jurisprudence, we could do a 𝘭𝘰𝘵 worse than just cloning Ketanji Brown Jackson eight times to fill the vacancies.
The Chiles decision will go down in history as one of the court's worst calls of our era- right alongside Dobbs and Skrmetti. Roberts' court has easily become our worst since Taney's.
As I've said elsewhere, the right of a patient not to be abused should always take precedence over a practitioner's "right" to smother them in bullshit. Or a parent's. If you believe that the right to free speech should protect torture and brainwashing, you are evil. Full stop. 𝘕𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 has a right to subject another person to torture. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 has a right to be protected from it. This is basic 2+2=4 shit, and although I really didn't think it possible, at this historical moment, to have 𝘢𝘯𝘺 less faith in humanity... well, congratulations, y'all managed to make me lose just a 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 bit more that I didn't even realize I still had.
Yeah, I wasn't this disappointed when I found out RBG concurred with Citizen's United. At least that I could sort of understand from a legal standpoint, though it's one of those times where I think legal purity should give way to human realities.
But this one? Regulating medical care is very much a state interest.
I'm a firm 1a free expression supporter, but KBJ got this one right. What you say as a private individual is free; what you say as a licensed professional or other "on the job" situation can absolutely be punished by removal of license or firing or what have you. The last thing we need is the AMA, ABA, and APA being prevented from disbarring quacks through the legal defense that they have a 1a right to maintain their state license while giving patently bad professional advice. I mean, what's next, Kaiser Permanente denies antibiotics because their on-staff *licensed* humorist says we just need more yellow bile?
Hopefully the lower court will lay out the inconsistency between Chiles and Skrmetti and make a consistent ruling. I.e. both allowed, both forbidden, or maybe "square the circle" by saying talk therapy okay in both cases (affirming and opposing) but other treatments not (again, both affirming and opposing). The latter would at least prevent crazy torture stuff like shock therapy.
That is exactly what the right-wing hateful want. They keep passing laws to protect their amateur volunteer pregnancy crisis centers, which they claim can replace Planned Parenthood, except for the fact they pretty much only do ultrasounds, and lie to women that they are too far along to get an abortion, and claim they can do an abortion "reversal" a quack non-professional procedure that is dangerous and unproven.
Further Thought: If conversion therapy were purely VOLUNTARY, that might change the playing field at least a bit, though it would NOT change the fact that such treatment has yet to demonstrate anything like effectiveness. Most of us know that it will not be so, certainly not for kids. Kids will be told by intolerant parents that they are somehow WRONG for being who they are and THIS NICE LADY HERE will help them find their True Selves™.
And we will find more headlines about self-harm and suicides, linked to this crap in our news feeds in the not very distant future.
As Hemant said, this ruling doesn't technically overrule the lower court's finding. What it does is send it back to them and tells them to redo the case (a) using the 'strict scrutiny' standard, instead of the rational basis standard, and (b) considering SCOTUS' finding that this looks like viewpoint discrmination.
But maybe there's a way the lower court can point out that by only applying it to minors, it is "narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests", i.e. passes the strict scrutiny standard.
Oh, no, they won't talk about the self-harm of LGBTQ2SIA kids from this. There might be a few headlines wringing hands about an increase, probably blaming some form of metal rock, or social media, or video games. But certainly nothing that might point fingers at the haters and the people they keep in power.
For at least the last thirty years in this country, if you just made lots and lots of noise about your conservatism, you were then free to say any stupid, irresponsible thing you wanted. Thus, conservatism became the be-all and end-all of the human thought process in this once-great country. The fact is, American conservatives have a perfect record of having come down on the wrong side of history when it comes to every great issue that ever moved this country forward and made it better. This isn’t about doing something that will actually help LGBTQ kids, It’s about the fanatics in the anti-LGBTQ movement trying to feel good about themselves in the name of God.
If no one else has said it, I will: that ruling will HURT PEOPLE. It'll hurt kids who are trying to discover who they are. It'll hurt adults who get told they MUST undergo such "therapy" because reasons. It will hurt families and friends and uncounted others.
And it will help NO ONE.
Honestly, I'm sure some of them would prefer the kids to kill themselves than be gay or trans.
On a lot of issues in the current climate, abortion/maternity, LGBTQ, disabilities and employment, the conservative thinking really boils down to “conform to our strict narrow standards or die.” So many of their “solutions” to perceived problems are cruel and dangerous and have lead to many unnecessary deaths, and they are aware of the death they cause and continue to push for the same “solutions”. Many of the problems are of their own making even, then they push for deadly solutions. I mean, we know that there is a faction of white supremacists you in the conservative movement (if not the majority of whole of the movement) so it tracks that they want anyone who doesn’t conform to die. They don’t want to share the world with anyone not lily white and only want women because they can’t reproduce without us.
Well, not quite, they also want women for recreational use. Otherwise someone might think they're gay. But treat them as people? Heresy.
Tragically, a lot of 'em may get their wish. [sigh] DAMN, but this pisses me off!
Yes, that would “solve” the problem for some parents.
They definitely won't care if they hurt kids. In fact, I think it's something that leaves the anti-LGBTQ movement feeling validated.
Once again, the cruelty IS the point.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the USA hates women and children. Especially children after witnessing the events of the last year(s). Come to think of it, we’ve never cared about children:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJdlMCNu588/?igsh=N2VyY2V0aGRuZjNq
I had never heard of these Orphan Trains, so I looked up the Wikipedia. Fair warning, the references and further reading sections are sizable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Train
I had read isolated stories. I had not known this was on an industrial scale.
At least some of them want to hurt kids.
Even if they're not trying to deliberatly hurt kids, they're so blinded by their beliefs they cannot grasp the fact that's exactly what they're doing.
"MAGA hates the things they hate more than they love the things they love."
To "own the libs", MAGA would absolutely harm their own children, just like they harmed their elderly (remember stacked coffins in mass graves?) because they saw us Dems getting vaccination protections against Covid.
Apparently, seeing hundreds of thousands of elderly MAGA die horribly (and alone) somehow..."owned" us?
(FWIW, even the MAGA "generous" enough to allow us to live for the maximum "five years" have now been proven wrong, but I'm not hearing a lot about it.)
I had "gender affirming treatment" as a minor...all the way back in 1974. (And I am aware that Conversion Therapy is very different.)
Of course, no one knew what an EVIL MONSTER i (apparently) was back then...
(I can't even imagine a life without having had that very necessary, very simple medical treatment. Tragically, brutality is now part and parcel of controlling a population of innocent people with medical needs.)
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️I am glad you were helped, to live your best life.
Thank you!!!!
Your treatment was (I presume) both consensual and beneficial. I have a tough time believing that any form of conversion therapy would be either.
And if you is a "evil monster," ya coulda fooled me! 😉
Two injections of an unknown (to me) hormone.
The simple treatment gave me a life I never dreamed I might have, even including marriage (to a WOMAN, no less!) I confess gratitude that my issues never involved gender dysphoria. Not because of any bias, but simply because life is already quite complicated enough.
Thank you, Troublesh00ter. Your kindness (and everyone's) means more than might be imagined.
My joy, foofaraw. Always glad to help ... and beaucoup hugs available (if only virtual) if desired!
That's exactly why the ignorant sadists want it. Nothing good ever came of letting the "Barbarians in the gate."
💯💯
If it were 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 words, then I could see the possible point of allowing it under the First Amendment. But those words are so cruel, hateful, and bullying that it will increase suicidal ideation among its targets, the opposite of what therapy is supposed to do. That is why it shouldn't be allowed, because it is not only words, even when the "therapist" is just talking.
How many bigoted parents are going to try to "fix" their children only to bury them? One is too many.
Remember Nex Benedict? Amateur bullying killed them. Now the professionals will be doing the bullying.
"first, do no harm."
Joe,
Why do you suppose we do NOT hear of the free-speech restrictions based on the "yelling fire in a crowded theatre" exception on practically a DAILY basis?
Even MAGA pretends to understand things it hears constantly...
MAGA only wants to restrict everyone else's speech. They will do some very impressive mental gymnastics to say that speech they don't like falls under the restrictions already in place. They will do the same impressive mental gymnastics to say that those same restrictions apply to their speech.
Hurting people is their life’s goals.
Bigots: “Kids deserve real help affirming that their bodies are not a mistake and that they are wonderfully made."
We now take you to a children's cancer ward for an update on those wonderfully made bodies.
God works in mysterious ways 🙄
I cannot add anything to what hemant has said. I’m not even going to try. This is not a free speech issue, this is a professional conduct issue. And gay kids are going to pay for it. Like the abortion decision, it simply ignores everything else in favor of a predetermined outcome.
I hope every gay person harmed by this as the courage to sue these assholes into next week.
👆👆👆👆🎯
Let's stop calling it conversion therapy and refer to it by its real name: Torture. A violation of international law and a crime against humanity.
"Shaming Therapy." "I'm Not Comfortable With LGBTQ+ People Therapy" "Conform Therapy." "Everyone MUST Be Like ME Therapy"
I'm sure there are LOTS of other more appropriate names for this crap.
"Conform or die" therapy.
👆🎯That is how I always refer to it generally I say "child-torture".
If conversion therapy doesn't class as child molestation, I don't know what does.
Damn, yes.
We are now the Turning Point United States of America where my speech is protected and yours is not. Funny how that works.
Thank you Ketanji Brown Jackson for standing your ground. She knows that the game is and has been rigged and isn’t afraid to say it.
The Alliance Defending Freedom’s comment “Kids deserve real help affirming that their bodies are not a mistake and that they are wonderfully made.” Is so nonsensical, rife with Christian flowery language that means nothing important. Compared to Brown-Jackson’s dissent or the church state separation groups’ statements, it’s like a toddler debating a renowned physics scientist about the workings of physics. (You know what I mean, an expert in their field).
Who is saying an LGBTQ person isn’t “wonderfully made” or that their body is a mistake? Is this how they speak to cancer patients? That they need to accept their cancer as godswill? Or say, a child born without legs, or someone with Ehler’s Danlos Syndrome, or any other condition? We acknowledge the disease or condition and make attempts to help the person with them live their best lives. We don’t bully them into pretending they don’t have the problems or that they can’t make adjustments to their bodies to improve their lives, we don’t just torture them into little boxes of acceptable standards not based in reality. We do work to make other people’s disabilities more palatable for non-disabled people to be around, but that is something progressive society is working on.
I’m sorry, but whenever religious groups and people start trying to debate, they just use a whole other language, and super shallow ideas with black and white thinking and they are always out of their depth. Like yesterday’s bot, “discernment matters”, what do you mean, explain where the discernment that we had detailed wasn’t used or what you mean beyond “discernment matters.” Bumper sticker debate is only paper thin.
To expand on a thought from downthread, for the free speech absolutists out there:
Some viewpoints 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be banned. Playing chicken with the Tolerance Paradox is how we ended up in this stupid ditch in the first place. If Nazis were not allowed to march, they would not have been able to march their way into our halls of government; if hate speech against vulnerable minorities were actually illegal, politicians would not have been able to build their campaigns around it... but they did, and they have. If we somehow manage to defeat the fascist MAGA movement, secure sufficient majorities in Congress, and maybe someday get control of the Supreme Court, we are going to have to step the fuck over that line to keep another movement just like it from wrecking everything again in a generation or two. We need stronger hate speech laws. We need to make it a crime to display certain symbols, to fly certain flags, and to advocate for certain worldviews.
Democracy has clearly demonstrated that it needs to have its hand held to keep it from wandering into traffic. That sucks- it really, truly does- but it's the truth. We are not mature enough, as a society, to be trusted with the responsibility of being able to say whatever we want, whenever we want. It 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be illegal for Nazis to march. It 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be illegal to run a campaign on demonizing immigrants and trans people. And yes, it 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be illegal to run a conversion therapy practice- and it should be illegal not only because it's fucking malpractice that demonstrably does harm, but also because the 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘴 behind it are hideously, egregiously wrong. Mere exposure to those ideas does harm- not just the practices that stem from them, but the 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴. That those who hold them are permitted to spread them freely makes the world less safe for those they target.
"But what if the other side does it too," you say? 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵. Look at what they've done to Stonewall, for fuck's sake, or to the Smithsonian. Look at their "don't say gay" laws, at their bathroom bans, at Trump's weaponization of the DoJ to prosecute political opponents, at them banning news outlets from the White House and the Pentagon if they don't suck Trump and Hegseth's dicks hard enough... the Nazis are 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 working to persecute and ban viewpoints they disagree with. We need to be willing to get down in the mud, the moment we have political power again, and 𝘣𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬. If we don't, they will; we know they will, because they're doing it right now. The high road you are still so insistent on taking leads over a cliff. We know where the road leads because 𝘸𝘦'𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘧.
But I know I'm just barking at the walls. I know we aren't going to learn our lesson. If we survive the landing, we're just gonna go and drive off that same cliff again, and again, and again, secure in the delusion that if we just take that high road 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, it'll magically lead somewhere better than it has before. It won't.
Playing chicken? More like playing Russian roulette. :)
With a semi-auto.
Here in Australia, throwing Nazi salutes in public gets your fascist arse thrown in jail and rightly so.
Spot on!
𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝑏𝑒 𝑏𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑑.
Let's play the children's cut the cake game. Only instead of "you cut, I pick first", it will be "you play Legislature/Judicial and decide what powers government has to ban speech; then I play Executive and decide what speech to use them on." Oh and for purposes of this game (only), assume that I don't like you or your positions. Muhahaha.
Okay with that set-up, make your first move: what banning powers are you going to give me?
See the problem? It frankly baffles me that liberals are advocating for government speech bans with Trump in the WH, the GOP in charge of Congress, and a 6-3 conservative majority of SCOTUS. When you say "some viewpoints should be banned," you do realize who would be in charge of deciding what viewpoints gets banned, don't you?
(Sidebar: this particular case isn't a good free speech one. I have no problem with Colorado requiring doctors to avoid certain medical practices in order to keep their license. That isn't a free speech issue because the doctor is still perfectly able to voice their views, write books about it, advocate for changes to licensing etc...They just can't practice that technique on patients in the state until their advocacy wins. But being able to advocate for it fulfills the 1a requirement.)
Who 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 be in charge of it? Bit of a tense gaffe, that.
You're coming at this as though censorship of left-leaning views by a conservative government isn't something that is already happening. It 𝘪𝘴 already happening, with 𝘢𝘯𝘥 without the support of the law.
We know exactly what it would look like, because it's in the news every day. We know what forms of speech they'd go after first, because they're several lines down the target list. This isn't a thought experiment anymore. We know where we are, and we know how we got here. Where we are is the teetering edge of fascist oblivion, and how we got here is that we let the fascists tell any bigoted lies they pleased until 49% of voters either believed them or just stopped caring what was real and what wasn't.
I also used to think that the answer to bad speech was more good speech, but the reality is that it is easier for a lie to gain traction than it is for the truth to topple it. The truth needs help. We aren't in a position to do anything about this now, but sooner or later, however many years it takes, we will hold the levers of power again- and when we do, we'd better have a good think about how to prevent another Trump. Part of that effort 𝘩𝘢𝘴 to be a far more robust set of hate speech laws, 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘩- because without the bigotry on full blast, there's no MAGA.
We need to change how we think about some of our core values as a country, or this 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 all happen again. Fascists fight dirty, and we're going to have to fight dirty too if we want to stop them from making another power play. There are only two real options here- either we start lying our asses off too, and put the final nail in the coffin on politics having any connection to reality... or we get out the duct tape and 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 the fascists shut the fuck up, when and if we have the power over them.
When a product proves itself to be harmful or defective, we ban its sale and pull it off store shelves. It's time to do the same with the marketplace of ideas, and work to take the demonstrably bad ideas out of circulation. This country's shit-stupid electorate simply can't be trusted not to grab another jar of fascism on its way to the checkout otherwise.
Exactly. New horrible ideas are bad enough, but... old horrible ideas that we've seen play out in practice are a very different thing. We 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 where Nazi ideology leads. The evidence is on film; the death camps are still standing as silent witness to that ideology's millions of victims. We don't need to protect Nazi speech. It's never going to contribute anything to our world but more misery.
Yes, it's dangerous to start down the road of banning any old thing that threatens to upset the status quo. I don't know where, exactly, the line should be drawn... but it isn't hard to recognize at least a few points of view that should definitely not be allowed to propagate. We have, for example, more than enough historical evidence to conclude that fascism, in any of its forms, is too dangerous to be given a public platform. It appeals too easily to the ignorant and the vicious among us, and we know that it leads at the very least to tyrannical dictators, and at the worst, wars of conquest and acts of genocide. We should have acted on that knowledge and taken steps to prevent it from ever gaining power here, rather than defending fascists' "right" to be loudly and proudly terrible.
The goal of religious extremism has always been the same, they want to psychologically torment gay kids, so they’ll stay in the closet. As long as the kids stay in the closet they can pretend that homosexuals don’t exist. How much damage they do to children, is irrelevant. Keep in mind these are the same people that sat in conventions and said AIDS was God’s final solution. These are the same people that protested the funerals of families who were laying their loved ones to rest, who had died of AIDS.
And just a sidenote these are the same people that voted a rapist and pedophile into the White House. Those actions alone promote more rape and pedophilia.
👆👆👆👆👆🎯
So LGBTQ kids DON'T have a right to free speech/free expression, cristers? Is that how the game is played?
Tell you what, let's flip the script and practice conversion therapy on Christians to rid them of their delusions about supernatural beings and realms when there is no evidence for either. How'll that be?
How's that? Persecution, you say? Oh, that's right. Christians are only okay with persecution so long as THEY are the ones doing it.
They don't want to give LGBTQ kids any rights, because they see all children as things that are owned by the parents.
GMTA.
If we began promoting DECONVERSION THERAPY on Christians, claiming (truthfully!) that they have been bamboozled by their pastors and priests and we provide relief from their brainwashing and indoctrination, they would scream PERSECUTION at the top of their lungs before we could finish a sentence.
"We're through the looking glass, here, people. White is black, and black is white." Boy, howdy, are we ever.
To them children are chattel, they don't see them as potential adults with needs of their own who need tools to cope with reality. They want to keep them ignorant so they remain in their tribe.
That’s exactly what the US needs MORE suppression of being who you are. It’s worked out really well for us and our so-called collective morality so far. It’s dangerous, abusive, and will continue to plaque our society until we stop compromising with religious fascists at every turn. Zero lessons have been learned.
Apparently I'm still too pissed off to form a rational thought about this. There are no words for how disappointed I am in Sotomayor and Kagan. The conservative majority, I expect to be stupid and evil; they pull this shit all the time. Those two, I thought better of. At least one justice saw through the bullshit... for all the good it does. I'm thinking that, if we ever manage to wrest control of the court and return it to reason and good jurisprudence, we could do a 𝘭𝘰𝘵 worse than just cloning Ketanji Brown Jackson eight times to fill the vacancies.
The Chiles decision will go down in history as one of the court's worst calls of our era- right alongside Dobbs and Skrmetti. Roberts' court has easily become our worst since Taney's.
As I've said elsewhere, the right of a patient not to be abused should always take precedence over a practitioner's "right" to smother them in bullshit. Or a parent's. If you believe that the right to free speech should protect torture and brainwashing, you are evil. Full stop. 𝘕𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 has a right to subject another person to torture. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 has a right to be protected from it. This is basic 2+2=4 shit, and although I really didn't think it possible, at this historical moment, to have 𝘢𝘯𝘺 less faith in humanity... well, congratulations, y'all managed to make me lose just a 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 bit more that I didn't even realize I still had.
Yeah, I wasn't this disappointed when I found out RBG concurred with Citizen's United. At least that I could sort of understand from a legal standpoint, though it's one of those times where I think legal purity should give way to human realities.
But this one? Regulating medical care is very much a state interest.
I'm a firm 1a free expression supporter, but KBJ got this one right. What you say as a private individual is free; what you say as a licensed professional or other "on the job" situation can absolutely be punished by removal of license or firing or what have you. The last thing we need is the AMA, ABA, and APA being prevented from disbarring quacks through the legal defense that they have a 1a right to maintain their state license while giving patently bad professional advice. I mean, what's next, Kaiser Permanente denies antibiotics because their on-staff *licensed* humorist says we just need more yellow bile?
Hopefully the lower court will lay out the inconsistency between Chiles and Skrmetti and make a consistent ruling. I.e. both allowed, both forbidden, or maybe "square the circle" by saying talk therapy okay in both cases (affirming and opposing) but other treatments not (again, both affirming and opposing). The latter would at least prevent crazy torture stuff like shock therapy.
That is exactly what the right-wing hateful want. They keep passing laws to protect their amateur volunteer pregnancy crisis centers, which they claim can replace Planned Parenthood, except for the fact they pretty much only do ultrasounds, and lie to women that they are too far along to get an abortion, and claim they can do an abortion "reversal" a quack non-professional procedure that is dangerous and unproven.
https://jessica.substack.com/p/a-crisis-pregnancy-center-nearly
Further Thought: If conversion therapy were purely VOLUNTARY, that might change the playing field at least a bit, though it would NOT change the fact that such treatment has yet to demonstrate anything like effectiveness. Most of us know that it will not be so, certainly not for kids. Kids will be told by intolerant parents that they are somehow WRONG for being who they are and THIS NICE LADY HERE will help them find their True Selves™.
And we will find more headlines about self-harm and suicides, linked to this crap in our news feeds in the not very distant future.
Yes.
As Hemant said, this ruling doesn't technically overrule the lower court's finding. What it does is send it back to them and tells them to redo the case (a) using the 'strict scrutiny' standard, instead of the rational basis standard, and (b) considering SCOTUS' finding that this looks like viewpoint discrmination.
But maybe there's a way the lower court can point out that by only applying it to minors, it is "narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests", i.e. passes the strict scrutiny standard.
Oh, no, they won't talk about the self-harm of LGBTQ2SIA kids from this. There might be a few headlines wringing hands about an increase, probably blaming some form of metal rock, or social media, or video games. But certainly nothing that might point fingers at the haters and the people they keep in power.
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟: 𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑎𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑡’𝑠 𝑎 “𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑒𝑐ℎ” 𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑒. 𝐽𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝐿𝐺𝐵𝑇𝑄 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒.
We need the Trevor Project more than ever.
The Trevor Project - Suicide Prevention for LGBTQ+ Young People https://share.google/OZXzPzWTMHnuhofXc
As I said elsewhere, there was some small optimistic part of me that hoped I wouldn't have to leave them money in my will.
For at least the last thirty years in this country, if you just made lots and lots of noise about your conservatism, you were then free to say any stupid, irresponsible thing you wanted. Thus, conservatism became the be-all and end-all of the human thought process in this once-great country. The fact is, American conservatives have a perfect record of having come down on the wrong side of history when it comes to every great issue that ever moved this country forward and made it better. This isn’t about doing something that will actually help LGBTQ kids, It’s about the fanatics in the anti-LGBTQ movement trying to feel good about themselves in the name of God.
OT: trump pedo pastor free after 6 months.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/04/01/robert-morris-megachurch-founder-sexual-abuse-released-jail/89414796007/
Christian privilege. Again.