Jan. 31, 2015

NOTE:  This is totally sick!  The clones have lost it!  ---PHB

Lawmakers in Oklahoma have proposed a law that would protect the right of people with unwanted same-sex attractions to obtain counseling and therapy.

WND reported California and New Jersey lawmakers and courts barred counselors from talking to minors about changing unwanted same-sex attractions, even if it is requested.

The court fight over the censorship statutes in the two states has been elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A petition explains: “If the client’s gender identity, mannerisms, or expressions differ from the client’s biological sex and the client’s feelings are unwanted – meaning [that] he does not want to transition from a male to a female identity – but instead wants to ‘change’ his female identity, mannerisms, or expression to conform to his biological sex, then [state law] forbids such counseling.

“Similarly, the statute permits the counseling of a client to affirm same-sex attractions, but prohibits counseling a minor to change unwanted SSA. Under no circumstances may a licensed counselor counsel a minor to change unwanted SSA. Nor may the counselor counsel a minor to change unwanted opposite sex mannerisms, expressions, or identity, even when the client wants to change them based on sincerely held religious beliefs,” it stated.

Attorneys with Liberty Counsel have fought the provisions in both California and New Jersey.

But now Oklahoma is moving in the opposite direction, with a proposal from state Rep. Sally Kern of District 84 to protect such counseling.

House Bill 1598 is “an act relating to conversion therapy; creating the Freedom to Obtain Conversion Therapy Act; defining certain terms; providing right to obtain certain counseling or conversion therapy’ preventing certain infringement by the state; providing certain rights of parents; permitting mental health provider to engage in sexual orientation change efforts with a child; providing for codification; and declaring an emergency.”

The proposal states: “The people of this state have the right to seek and obtain counseling or conversion therapy from a mental health provider in order to control or end any unwanted sexual attraction, and no state agency shall infringe upon that right. Parents may obtain such counseling or therapy for their children under eighteen (18) years of age without interference by the state.”

In an interview, Kern told WND the bill is preemptive, aiming to prevent activists from coming into the state to press for the kind of laws passed in California and New Jersey.

“The LGBTQ activists are really ramping up to make a full-fledged attack,” she said. “So our thinking is, what better state than Oklahoma to get this passed?”

She said supporters hope it will be a standard for other states.

Kern noted elected officials overwhelmingly are Republican, and she expects the bill to pass.

An important part of the effort, she said, will be providing lawmakers with the facts about the issue so they are not misled.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld New Jersey’s censorship plan, Liberty Counsel noted, but its discussion created a split with another circuit on the appropriate level of scrutiny applied to regulators of such speech and also on the issue of whether counseling even constitutes speech.

The petition said that “without proper guidance from this court on the appropriate categorization of communications between counselor and client or doctor and patients, these professionals are constantly at risk of statutes, such as A3371, that seek to remove their communications from the requisite level of protection afforded by the First Amendment.”

Said Liberty Counsel in a statement: “The idea is not sound that all speech by licensed professionals can be silenced simply by virtue of the individual holding a professional license. Professional licensing statutes do not give the state veto power of disfavored viewpoints and speech of licensed professionals. The First Amendment simply does not tolerate such overreach.”

The petition continues: “A3371 represents a gross intrusion into the sacrosanct area of the relationship between counselors and clients and doctors and patients. This relationship, and the therapeutic alliance that develops between counselor and client and doctor and patient, is one of the oldest and most protected in the nation’s history.”

Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, said: “If counseling regarding change is banned today in New Jersey, tomorrow a different legislature with an opposite political agenda could ban affirmation and allow only counsel regarding change. The state thwarts self-determination when it interferes with the counselor-client or doctor-patient relationship.”

Liberty Counsel explained: “SOCE counseling has been singled out for prohibition merely because the state is opposed to and disagrees with the goal of some clients who want to change or eliminate their unwanted SSA and to conform their identity, behaviors, and attractions to their own self-perception or conform them to their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

The lower courts ruled that the state’s restrictions on counselors’ speech “does not directly or indirectly implicate, regulate, or target speech on its face.”

The Supreme Court needs to address the issue because, among other reasons, the circuit appellate courts have issued rulings that disagree, LC said.

WND reported the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California said the counseling is “conduct” and not speech.

In the New Jersey dispute, Liberty Counsel represents two licensed mental health professionals, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality and the American Association of Christian Counselors.

When the 9th Circuit released its opinion in the California case, there was a stinging rebuke in the dissent.

“May California remove from the First Amendment’s ambit the speech of certain professionals when the state disfavors its content or its purpose? – The Supreme Court has definitely and unquestionably said ‘No.’ It is no longer within our discretion to disagree,” said the minority opinion from Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain.

He was joined by two other judges in the dissent, which said, “Legislatures cannot nullify the First Amendment’s protections for speech by playing this labeling game.”

“Indeed,” he said, “authoritative precedents have established that neither professional regulations generally, nor even a more limited subclass of rules, remain categorically outside of the First Amendment’s reach.”

Wrote O’Scannlain: “The panel cites no case holding that speech, uttered by professionals to their clients, does not actually constitute ‘speech’ for purposes of the First Amendment. And that should not surprise us – for the Supreme Court has not recognized such a category. … The Supreme Court has chastened us lower courts for creating, out of whole cloth, new categories of speech to which the First Amendment does not apply. But, that is exactly what the panel’s opinion accomplishes in this case.”

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