‘Must Stay Gay’ laws face their overdue reckoning

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in Chiles v. Salazar, a case that could reshape counseling freedom across America. The law at issue is one of several so-called “conversion therapy bans” that restrict what therapists may say to their clients.

The Ruth Institute calls them what they are: “Must Stay Gay” laws.

The fight for counseling freedom isn’t about forcing anyone to change. It’s about defending every person’s right to seek help aligned with their own beliefs and goals.

These laws silence counselors and harm families, especially young people struggling with trauma, anxiety, and sexual confusion. The question before the court is simple: Does the First Amendment allow a state to dictate which viewpoints a licensed therapist may express?

A strong signal from the court

The central issue in Chiles is viewpoint discrimination. Colorado’s law allows therapists to affirm a child’s same-sex attraction or gender confusion — but forbids them from helping a client resist or change those feelings.

Justice Samuel Alito captured the absurdity in one hypothetical, which I paraphrase (the whole argument is here):

An adolescent male comes to a licensed therapist; he feels uneasy and guilty about feeling attracted to other boys. He asks the therapist to help him feel better as a gay man. Colorado law permits this. Another adolescent male goes to a licensed therapist and asks him to help him feel less attracted to other boys. Colorado law forbids this.

That’s government picking sides in a moral debate, not equality under the law.

When pressed, Colorado’s attorney stumbled badly. Alito then asked whether “medical consensus” has ever been wrong. She hesitated, and he reminded her of Buck v. Bell, the notorious 1927 decision that upheld forced sterilization based on “progressive” science. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes expressed the common progressive opinion at the time: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

In closing, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney James Campbell, who represents therapist Kaley Chiles, delivered the knockout line:

The state of Colorado allows a 12-year-old girl to seek counseling to affirm her so-called gender identity as a boy without parental consent — but forbids her, even with her parents, from seeking help to accept herself as female.

That’s blatant viewpoint discrimination. On this point, the justices seemed receptive.

Junk science and the ‘born this way’ myth

The state also claimed that no one has ever changed their sexual attractions — a claim as false as it is arrogant. One counterexample disproves it, and there are thousands. Our amicus brief cites studies and testimonies from men and women who experienced real change, often through talk therapy.

Colorado’s attorney dug herself in deeper, asserting that all theories linking abuse or family dynamics to sexual identity have been “debunked.” They haven’t. The research she relies on doesn’t distinguish between minors and adults, licensed and unlicensed therapists, or talk therapy and coercive “aversion” practices.

That’s ideology, not science. And the justices noticed.

RELATED: Christian counselors fight for freedom of speech before the Supreme Court

Photo by Sakorn Sukkasemsakorn via Getty Images

The state’s lawyer also leaned on the claim that being gay is innate and immutable. She presented no evidence for that assertion, only the assumption that it must be true. But twin and genetic studies contradict it. Many people once identified as LGBT and no longer do. They exist, they matter, and they expose the lie behind the “born this way” narrative.

What comes next

The court offered no hints about how it will rule on the immutability question. But the justices heard enough to know that Colorado’s law enforces one approved orthodoxy and punishes dissent. That’s unconstitutional — and morally indefensible.

The fight for counseling freedom isn’t about forcing anyone to change. It’s about defending every person’s right to seek help aligned with their own beliefs and goals.

Here at the Ruth Institute, we’ll keep pressing the truth: “Must Stay Gay” is not OK.