conversion therapy

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Upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case could be a huge religion-beat sleeper story

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Upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case could be a huge religion-beat sleeper story

The agenda for the U.S. Supreme Court term that began this month has zero cases involving the two religion clauses of the First Amendment.

That’s quite the change after the important religion rulings the past two years, not to mention religious conservatives’ and liberals’ agitation after the 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe , which had legalized abortion nationwide.

So religion-watchers may not be aware that the court soon takes up two potentially tectonic cases involving — would you believe it — small businesses that fish for herring off the New England coast and say they shouldn’t have to pay their federal monitors. The cases are Loper Bright v. Raimondo (docket # 22-451), newly combined Oct. 13 with Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce (docket #22-1219). Oral arguments could come as soon as January.

This gets into the weeds of administrative law, an area that normally does not set pulses pounding but here involves the hot political dispute over powers exercised by federal agencies. Conservatives assert that agencies have long been interpreting and enforcing laws in ways that Congress never intended or has never defined, thus usurping legislative prerogatives and violating the Constitution’s “separation of powers.”

Background: The two fishing companies seek relief by overturning the Court’s highly influential 1984 precedent in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. This unanimous decision granted wide deference to federal agencies in “reasonable” interpretations, applications and enforcement of ambiguous laws passed by Congress.

The list of Loper briefs posted by the invaluable SCOTUSBlog.com shows the variety of interests that include 48 of the 50 states lined up on the two sides and the Republican U.S. House of Representatives, along with e.g. the AFL-CIO, American Cancer Society, Environmental Defense Fund, Gun Owners of America and e-cigarette industry.

You are waiting for the religion-beat angle?


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Ex-gay Catholic, Muslim shooter, Orthodox Jewish writer: They just don't fit the narrative?

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Ex-gay Catholic, Muslim shooter, Orthodox Jewish writer: They just don't fit the narrative?

An infamous gay personality known for his approving comments about pedophilia has had a 180-degree conversion, given up homosexual sex and has consecrated himself to St. Joseph.

Not a joke. The news broke about a month ago. Not read about it? Well, the story is out there, but mostly conservative sites are reporting on it.

Why is this? Well, it all has to do with narrative. Let’s start with the New York Post’s read on it:

Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has come out as “ex-gay” – announcing that he “would like to help rehabilitate what the media calls “conversion therapy” over the next decade, according to a report.

The 36-year-old British political commentator, whose speeches and writings often ridicule political correctness, social justice and feminism, declared himself no longer gay and “sodomy free,” he told LifeSite in an interview.

Yiannopoulos — who once said that sex between 13-year-olds and older men can be “life-affirming” — told the outlet that he is now leading a daily consecration online to St. Joseph.

“When I used to kid that I only became gay to torment my mother, I wasn’t entirely joking,” he said.

But what about his gay marriage?

As far as his personal life, Yiannopoulos said of his husband: “The guy I live with has been demoted to housemate, which hasn’t been easy for either of us. It helps that I can still just about afford to keep him in Givenchy and a new Porsche every year. Could be worse for him, I guess.”

Now we all know that if a major (or even not-so-major) evangelical figure can gone the opposite direction, the media would be all over it. Look at the coverage that Josh Harris, celeb author of “I Kissed Dating Good-bye,” got when he dumped his faith and was last seen marching in a gay pride parade in Vancouver, BC.


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Yet another ex-ex-gay leader apologizes -- but no one really investigates facts in this story

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Yet another story about an ex-ex-gay crusader has surfaced in the news, starting with this Aug. 30 (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier piece and, a few days later, this Washington Post piece.

The big announcement in both pieces is that a guy named McKrae Game –- called a “conversion therapy leader” by the Post and Courier who was leading “one of the nation’s most prominent conversion therapy centers” (saith the Washington Post) –- wants to disavow his work in the ex-gay movement.

Both stories employ a narrative style of journalism that is quite fetching. However, only one side is told; that of Game. His luckless wife (who has stuck with him all this time); the board of directors that fired him back in 2017 and folks in his (apparently) former church all go uninterviewed. There is only one side worth telling in this drama.

First, the Post and Courier:

SPARTANBURG — McKrae Game is gay.

He was gay when he received counseling from a therapist who assured him he could overcome his same-sex attractions.

He was gay when he married a woman and founded what would become one of the nation’s most expansive conversion therapy ministries.

He was gay when thousands of people just like him sought his organization’s counsel, all with the goal of erasing the part of themselves Game and his associates preached would send them to hell.

For two decades, he led Hope for Wholeness, a faith-based conversion therapy program in South Carolina’s Upstate. Conversion therapy is a discredited practice intended to suppress or eradicate a person’s LGBTQ identity through counseling or ministry.

Over decades of religion reporting, I had heard of a lot of such efforts — but Hope for Wholeness had never come across my radar. Fortunately, the video alongside this piece mentions that it was an offshoot of Exodus, a much more famous ex-gay ministry.


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CNN on Tulsi Gabbard: Some candidates' LGBTQ policy ghosts are more relevant than others

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It’s pretty easy to see where the Rep. Tulsi Gabbard story is going for the new CNN.

I think the heart of the story can be expressed this way: Are you now, or have you ever been a … conservative Democrat (or related, by blood, to one)?

Gabbard recently declared that she is one of the legions of Democrats who plan to seek the party’s presidential nomination. She is the first Hindu (a somewhat controversial convert, no less) to take that step.

However, she also created a mini-media storm with an op-ed in The Hill in which (trigger warning) she took an old-school liberal stand on a key religious liberty issue, affirming Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution, which bans any form of “religious test” for those seeking public office.

Yes, we’re talking about the Knights of Columbus wars. Gabbard wrote:

While I oppose the nomination of Brian Buescher to the U.S. District Court in Nebraska, I stand strongly against those who are fomenting religious bigotry, citing as disqualifiers Buescher’s Catholicism and his affiliation with the Knights of Columbus. If Buescher is “unqualified” because of his Catholicism and affiliation with the Knights of Columbus, then President John F. Kennedy, and the 'liberal lion of the Senate' Ted Kennedy would have been “unqualified” for the same reasons.

Wait for it. Here is the language that probably put a millstone around her neck.

No American should be told that his or her public service is unwelcome because “the dogma lives loudly within you” as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said to Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearings in 2017 to serve as U.S. Circuit Court judge in the 7th Circuit. …

The party that worked so hard to convince people that Catholics and Knights of Columbus like Al Smith and John F. Kennedy could be both good Catholics and good public servants shows an alarming disregard of its own history in making such attacks today.

We must call this out for what it is – religious bigotry.

The reactions were fierce, to say the least.


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Gay legislator and an evangelical prof struck a compromise: Los Angeles Times explains most of it

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Earlier this year, a homosexual California legislator produced a bill to halt any counseling efforts to help gays to not gay, getting a fierce reaction from local Christians as to what the real effects of this bill might be. 

I reported on this in April in a blog post asking why so few media were covering it.

The bill was killed at the last minute on Aug. 31. The Los Angeles Times had the best wrap-up of the behind-the-scenes machinations. This is a very complex issue, so it's important to pay attention to which points of view make it into the story and which ones do not.

The author of a high-profile measure to curb paid “conversion therapy,” which purports to change a person’s sexual orientation, said he is shelving his bill Friday in hopes of finding consensus with religious communities that vigorously opposed the proposal.

The bill by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), which would have designated paid “conversion therapy” services as a fraudulent business practice under the state’s consumer protection law, easily cleared prior legislative hurdles thanks to large Democratic majorities in both chambers, as well as a handful of Republican votes.

This is a very unusual piece of legislation; in effect, a bill eliminating what it believed to be consumer fraud involved in conversion therapy literature. 

But after religious groups assailed the proposal, calling it a threat to their right to practice their faith, Low went on a listening tour to meet with clergy across the state. Low ultimately decided to pull Assembly Bill 2943 before final approval in the Assembly, he said.

“I believe we are on the side of the angels on this issue,” Low said. “Having said that, in order to get it right, why wouldn’t we want to engage in meaningful, thoughtful, transformational relationships and conversations?”

This story is a much bigger deal it appears. This law was in the can, ready to be passed. But Low pulled defeat from the jaws of victory (at least in the eyes of those backing the bill) by realizing the evangelical Christian opponents might be onto something in terms of their First Amendment rights.


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Can conversion therapy get a fair hearing in mainstream press? Short answer: No

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It wasn’t that long ago that people who wished not to be gay were involved in “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy.” Not everyone welcomed same-sex attraction and those who didn’t found therapists who tried to help them.

Very few people were trying to "pray the gay away," but many did believe that human sexuality is a spectrum (as in the Kinsey scale) of orientations and that it was possible to modify emotions and behaviors.

Quite a few churches –- which had no other ideas about how to handle the gay folks in their midst –- believed in this therapy and referred people to it. Back in the 1990s, I knew folks who either worked in this field or were allied with those who did. For most churches, it was the only way out for people who didn’t want to engage in behavior that traditional forms of the major world religions considered to be sinful.

That was then. The Barack Obama administration went to war against the therapy during its eight years in power and Democrats haven’t given up the ship, according to this Washington Post piece.

The big legal question: What happens with children and young adults? What role can parents play in this process?

Democratic lawmakers this week introduced a bill that would ban the practice of “conversion therapy,” treatments that historically have targeted the LGBT community and claim to be able to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act of 2017 was introduced Tuesday by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), along with Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.). About 70 other members of Congress, all Democrats, have said they support the bill, which would allow the Federal Trade Commission to classify conversion therapy and its practitioners as fraudulent.
“The bill is very simple,” Lieu told The Washington Post. “It says it is fraud if you treat someone for a condition that doesn’t exist and there’s no medical condition known as being gay. LGBTQ people were born perfect; there is nothing to treat them for. And by calling this what it should be, which is fraud, it would effectively shut down most of the organizations.”


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