I was kicked out of my counseling program — the Supreme Court just vindicated my mission
On March 31, I celebrated when I got the news that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Colorado’s “conversion therapy” ban for minors violates our constitutional right to free speech. This court decision benefits us all.
First, it sparks the process of dismantling the tyranny of LGBT ideology. For too long, the queer activists have succeeded in manipulating the government to endorse and enforce their worldview over all others regarding sexuality and gender identity. A bedrock strategy of their agenda has been to preemptively censor alternative forms of counseling for individuals conflicted over their sexual attractions and/or sense of gender. If the option to explore one’s potential for change is removed in advance, then clients and therapists have only one pathway: LGBT-affirmation.
This starts with indoctrinating graduate school students by exposing them to only one side of the discussion and shaming and punishing any open inquiry, let alone dissent. Then, to fully secure tyrannical control, they make it outright illegal to offer counseling to explore a change in sexuality. They justified this blatant violation of both our rights as Americans and the ethical principle in the counseling profession of client self-determination by manipulating everyone through an aggressive propaganda campaign to believe counseling for the exploration of change in sexuality is intrinsically harmful and ineffective.
In America, we value our freedom enough that the activists knew better than to start by outlawing such therapy goals for adults. But we also value safetyism for our children enough that the activists knew they could get away with banning such counseling for minors, given how effectively they have convinced society to believe non-LGBT-affirming therapy is harmful. So, in 2012, in California, the activists passed their first SOCE (sexual orientation change efforts) ban for minors. Over the past decade or so, over 20 states and dozens of other municipalities have passed similar bans for therapy for minors to voluntarily explore change in unwanted same-sex attractions and behavior or gender identity and expression (what collectively gets called “conversion therapy”). And even though these laws applied only to counseling minors (and in some cases, what they consider “dependent adults”), these bans predictably had a larger effect for everyone else — a chilling effect.
The one-way narrative in academia and popular culture, combined with the force of law, made the idea of exploring change in sexuality so unthinkable that most therapists would never dream of offering it even for adults, even when the client explicitly requests it.
The psyop of the “conversion therapy” narrative did what laws alone could not do: make the majority of the public vilify counselors and view clients as victims. But our constitution exists not to uphold the hegemony of the majority; it exists to protect the rights of the minority. Only the bravest of therapists and clients not possessed by cultural programming would actually buck the system and engage in therapy that the rest of society deems anathema.
This is why the Supreme Court’s decision matters to me in a very personal way. I earned my bachelor’s in psychology at a Christian college in 2007, where I also ran a support group for men dealing with past trauma and a mix of sexual integrity concerns (such as sexual/porn addiction and unwanted same-sex attraction). I ran this group for years before entering graduate school to become a therapist. Despite some spirited classroom conversations about “conversion therapy,” my graduate school experience was going well until four weeks away from finishing my year-long internship and graduating.
On June 25, 2015 (coincidentally, the day before the Supreme Court’s decision on Obergefell that legalized gay marriage), the head of Chestnut Hill College’s internship program emailed me to tell me to stop my internship immediately because he saw on my online bio that I have experience with men coping with unwanted same-sex attractions. After meeting with him and another professor, the school determined that I must redo my entire year-long practicum and internship at another site. I did not take that lying down. Fortunately, attorneys Randy Wenger and Jeremy Samek from the Independence Law Center and the PA Family Institute came to my aid, eventually securing my ability to graduate from the very institution that kicked me out.
I have experienced first-hand the authoritarianism of LGBT activists, arrogant with their institutional, cultural, and political power. Despite the obvious advantage they have, they have not given up on portraying themselves as the victims or allies of hapless victims of religious conservatism. They need the boogeyman of “conversion therapy” to maintain their privilege and power; they need the masses to be terrified that, without cultural shame and legal sanctions, individuals with same-sex attractions or gender identity discordance will be unwitting victims of torture and pseudoscientific quackery. They dismiss the reality of a minority of clients seeking help of their own accord. They scoff at individuals reporting degrees of change in their sexuality or committing to chastity regardless of the continuation of same-sex attractions.
The topic of applying mainstream psychotherapy to assist clients with their own goals to explore their potential for change, or at least to bolster their ability to live according to their personal and religious convictions, is not up for debate in graduate school and the governing bodies of the psychotherapy professions. There is no good-faith discussion or curious, scientific inquiry into the possibilities of treating these concerns that clients present. The only approved approach is to affirm an LGBT identity, regardless of the client’s wishes.
Well, that stranglehold they have on this controversy is ending. And the anti-therapy activists have only themselves to blame. They forgot the decades it took to convince the public that homosexuality is a good and natural variant of human sexuality, and they thought that after Obergefell, they could easily usher in an embrace of gender ideology and lump efforts to heal gender identity disorder with sexual orientation “conversion therapy.” And they almost got away with it ... until enough people awoke to the insanity of deconstructing every societal norm around sex and gender and the barbarity of medicalizing children captured by the trans phenomenon.
So, Kaley Chiles’ challenge to Colorado’s “conversion therapy” ban came at just the right cultural moment.
I hope the Supreme Court’s ruling will lead to the conversation regarding sexuality and gender that we have long needed in our society and the helping professions. If we begin respecting the client’s right to choose his/her own goals for resolving sexuality conflicts, perhaps more therapists will be curious about the change-exploring approaches that are the most theoretically and ethically sound.
This is my mission. It is why I serve as a board member for the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, as the Training Facilitator for the Reintegrative Therapy Association, and why I have my YouTube channel, PsychoBible.
Having the freedom to counsel is not enough; we must show we can help struggling individuals safely and effectively.
Andrew Rodriguez is a licensed professional counselor in Pennsylvania. He's the director of Integrity Christian Counseling and the creator of the YouTube channel PsychoBible, in which he discusses psychology, theology, and sexuality. He's a certified Reintegrative Therapist. He's on the board of Voice of the Voiceless, uplifting the voices of ex-LGBT people. And he does work with ReStory Ministries, equipping churches to address LGBTQ. He's been married to his wife Jessica since 2007.Counseling practice website: integritychristiancounseling.care PsychoBible: youtube.com/PsychoBible
