Conservative justices reveal their distrust of medical expertise on LGBTQ+ issues | CNN Politics:
For the second time this year in a major controversy over treatment for LGBTQ youths, Supreme Court justices revealed their reluctance to accept a medical consensus.
This is likely because they already adjudicated US v. Skrmetti and what they found was that one side with a so-called “medical consensus” had been lying through their teeth.
Conservatives on Tuesday challenged the view – at the core of two dozen state laws – that it is dangerous for mental health counselors to encourage gay and trans teens to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.
This is a narrative push (which is typical for CNN on this issue). Actually, the case turns on whether “professional speech” is somehow outside First Amendment protection. Previously, there has been no such exclusion.
“The medical consensus is usually very reasonable and it’s very important,” Justice Samuel Alito asserted at one point before challenging the Colorado official defending the regulation, “But have there been times when the medical consensus has been politicized, has been taken over by ideology?”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett referred multiple times to “competing” views, despite the strong agreement in the medical field that therapy intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity can lead to health problems such as depression and anxiety and increase a person’s risk of suicide.
This is a great example of how the LGB movement—one founded on the rights of people with a sexual orientation different than heterosexuals—has been co-opted by the trans movement. They are not the same.
The message, universally, should be: “You are okay as who you are.” Counseling that advices that a person needs to change their sexual orientation (or somehow can) is wrong. Counseling that a person needs to change their sex (or that they somehow can) is similarly wrong. That said, both may be punished by professional organizations but cannot be banned by the government.
The justices’ skepticism of the medical consensus Tuesday recalled some of the denunciations last June when the justices upheld a Tennessee state ban on puberty blockers, hormones and other medical care to assist trans youths.
Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics, had endorsed the kind of gender-affirming care Tennessee banned.
Which is to say that Alito’s question about ideology taking over is apt. Medical associations in Europe (and elsewhere) do not agree with the AMA or the American Academy of Pediatrics.