Kaley Chiles went to the Supreme Court, arguing that her first amendment right is being taken away because she cannot, as she says, advise minors to follow their own biological sex and sexual orientation. In an interview with Alliance Defending Freedom, Andrew Spangenberg and Chiles make it clear as to how simple the situation is in their eyes—just a matter of free speech—both smiling, amused that this must be discussed:
Spangenberg: “Are you having conversations?”
Chiles: “Yeah, when a client comes to my office, especially for issues like these, then we have a conversation.”
Spangenberg: “Oh, wow. I think we just won the case, right?”
Additionally, Chiles claims that real fight is for her patients who she claims go to her wanting to align with their sexual orientation or gender identity. Based on these arguments, this Supreme Court case is a twofold issue: One, this is about protecting free speech. Two, this is about helping the LGBTQ community.
But both claims are ridiculous. Ultimately, what Chiles calls for will be a disaster for the LGBTQ community.
The first point regarding free speech does not hold weight because had her free speech been taken away, we would not be hearing her claims. But we very much are. Not only through the already noted videos from Alliance Defending Freedom; major networks, like CBS and CBN News, give her time to say what she thinks. Moreover, it should be noted that there is very clearly another place where her views hold strong: a church. As PBS NewsHour notes that the ban does not apply here and is where “the vast majority of conversion therapy cases” take place. Chiles should not find this disagreeable; after all, she did call what she is advocating for as “faith-informed therapy.” She also knows that religion is a motivating factor: “A lot of them [her clients] do come to me and express that they are here because they are aware that I am a Christian and they themselves are Christians.” The church seems like a reasonable place to send people if their motivation is religious. Not to give her any ideas, at the very least, she could become an advocate for churches as a safe haven for people seeking conversion therapy. Why can she not simply do that?
The reason is that talking of conversion therapy as a free speech issue comes with the big advantage of amplifying her message. Indeed, Chiles uses Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy the same way the Right uses “cancel culture.” The Right says that they cannot say what must be said, because cancel culture is out to get them. Josh Hawley, for example, remarked that “the Left has come after me…They canceled a book, a book that I was writing…Still going to get published by the way.” He does not care for the contradiction at play, but he does care for the applause that came after. Being “canceled” helped his book become a more noteworthy success in the eyes of his audience. He insists on being a victim of cancel culture because it will help gain him support.
Similarly, Kaley uses this supposed attack on her free speech as a way to fortify her opinion. Made to be seen as a victim, she makes her position noble and gets more people interested in what she has to say. It does not matter if it is true whether her free speech is being taken away. What matters is that she makes people believe this so that more people hear her out.
More people, however, should not hear her out. It has been said again and again, but it must be said until we all accept what is clear: conversion therapy is a danger. Chiles can make it sound as if conversion therapy is innocent by making it a matter of free speech, but it simply is not the case. This is made evident by just how many organizations oppose it. See here for a staggering list.
The fact that these organizations’ opposition is not enough to denounce conversion therapy is, to me, upsetting. Regardless, we can do more in fighting against conversion therapy. Here, to more thoroughly see the dangers of conversion therapy, I will take a slightly different approach. Using insight from Robert Jay Lifton’s work Thought Reform, we see that conversion therapy is closely aligned with brainwashing. As Lifton observed, one facet of thought reform is that of putting the doctrine over the person. Caught in thought reform, a person is subject to “the demand that character and identity be reshaped, not in accordance with one’s special nature or potentialities, but rather to fit the rigid contours of the doctrinal mold.”
We see this exemplified in Liam’s story of conversion therapy. Liam recounts how his church’s belief held supreme over his own way of being by calling his difficulties with gender identity and sexuality as “embrac[ing] a lie from the devil.” For Liam, the church set up “meetings often revolved around the pastor condemning my gender and sexuality, and citing scriptures that he said proved God’s design was for cis, heterosexual men and women.” That he had been “looking for support and acceptance” and did not get either should , in light of Lifton’s insight, be unsurprising; the church cannot provide either, since it means forgoing their sacred doctrines. Departing from the church did not leave Liam at ease, evidenced by the fact that he says, “I still live with the fear that I will go to hell.”
Similarly, Nurse Blake experienced the totalizing brainwashing conversion therapy abuses. Rather than be able to accept the love he experienced, conversion therapy made it so that he denounced it:
“Daniel was my first boyfriend. He was gentle and kind and made me feel seen in a way that didn’t come with conditions. But the people at therapy called him ‘a temptation’ and ‘a sin.’ So I broke up with him. I remember sitting in my room that night, staring at my Bible, trying to figure out what was ‘wrong’ with me and why people were telling me my life was ‘sin,’ pushing me further away from who I was.”
The fact that Blake had trouble understanding what was happening in him demonstrates another element of brainwashing. Lifton theorized that “Totalist language…is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging.” That language in this situation is the sin and temptation imposed on Blake’s partner to degrade their love. The effect of such language, Lifton observes, is “constriction. He is, so to speak, linguistically deprived; and since language is so central to all human experience, his capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed.”
Blake’s experiences, labeled as sins and temptations by his conversion therapy, blocked other more accurate and healthier interpretations of what he was feeling. Unfortunately, as with Liam, leaving was not the end of the suffering inflicted by this brainwashing. Blake comments, “Even after I left conversion therapy, the shame stayed with me like a second skin.”
In the analyses of these stories, I believe I am being fair to Chiles by examining moments in which speech was the core means of the conversion therapy—the discussions she believes are vital. Yet, even when conversion therapy is “just” talking, the speech is horrifying, resulting not in healing but in a lingering fear of hell; not in helping, but in denial of who they really are; not in curing, but in feelings of unworthiness.
Despite these harms, conversion therapy will have its supporters, predicated on the argument that this is all about free speech. Following the same reasoning that Chiles and her supporters provide, an article from Fire argues, “[T]alk therapy is speech. And when the government prohibits speech because it doesn’t like the views being expressed, it violates the First Amendment. The Court should strike down Colorado’s law.”
To keep the LGBTQ community safe from revolting brainwashing and its lasting misery, we must blare the message that conversion therapy must be avoided, regardless of how its supporters wish to purify it by saying it is nothing more than speech. Note, I write “must” intentionally. It is a must because the worst may happen: “[A] clear majority of the [Supreme Court] justices, across ideological lines, seemed inclined to rule against the Colorado law and in doing that, they could be upending similar state laws in half the country.”
