In an unfortunate win for Christian Nationalists, at the end of March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a mental health counselor who claimed Colorado’s law that protected LGBTQ+ children from harmful conversion “therapy” practices violated her First Amendment rights.
AU had been joined by nearly two dozen national and Colorado-based religious organizations in a friend-of-the-court brief in the Chiles v. Salazar case, urging the court to affirm that the state’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law did not violate the First Amendment rights of mental health practitioners. The brief had offered several religious perspectives, including Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Unitarian Universalist, that supported Colorado’s law because they believe all children should be protected from harm and feel safe, included, and supported.
“This campaign to strip protections from LGBTQ+ children was spearheaded by the Christian Nationalist group Alliance Defending Freedom as part of a nationwide effort to force everyone to live by their narrow beliefs,” said AU President and CEO Rachel Laser. “Today’s decision continues the trend of troubling precedent allowing religious extremists to harm our children. Now more than ever, we need a national recommitment to church-state separation; our children and our democracy are on the line.”