Newsletter: How Can Hate Be “Free Speech”?
The Supreme Court Has Ruled in Favor of Dangerous and Deadly “Conversion Therapy”
Imagine being kidnapped and taken away to a camp where there is no escape. You are forced to participate in a psychologically damaging, coercive program to change who you are into something more “acceptable” to the people who sent you there. You are harangued, abused, deprived of sleep, and your basic human rights, all because you didn’t fit into the box of “normal” cis/hetero expectations.
This is the sad reality facing countless teens and young adults in our nation today. Despite the fact that the medical field has denounced this practice as extremely harmful, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the state of Colorado’s ban on “Conversion Therapy” qualifies as governmental censorship of “free speech” and religious rights.
Simply put, they have ruled that religious groups have the right to essentially torture young people into being “straight.”
In this week’s post for paid subscribers, Conversion Therapy Now Has Constitutional Cover, I reaffirm my stance that “Conversion Therapy” is a destructive, systematic social influence program aimed at attempting to make those who are LGBT act straight or behave cisnormatively. An analysis of the amicus brief by Lisa Diamond, whose research was used to support coercion, refutes their cherry-picked information. Please read and share this important article widely!
If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, we invite you to consider becoming a supporter, so that you can enjoy weekly access to premium content like this, along with my full archive of expert interviews, useful articles, and comprehensive guides, including:
Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire with Lisa Diamond — My conversation with Dr. Diamond on how her longitudinal research challenges the “born this way” narrative and why sexual fluidity should never be used to justify conversion therapy.
Compassion Over Conversion: Continuing Science-based Research for Queer and Trans Health — An exploration of why science-based approaches to queer and trans health must replace coercive models.
Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy — Lucas Wilson’s account of surviving conversion therapy at Liberty University and the undue influence tactics used to suppress LGBTQ identity.
This week’s regular livestream will take place on Wednesday, April 8, at 2 pm EDT, where we will cover where the pundits are still not understanding brainwashing and mind control, and what we need to be doing to change the activism to be strategic. This Friday, April 10th’s livestream features guest Brittany Martinez, the Executive Director of PrinciplesFirst.us, also at 2 pm EDT. I attended and spoke at their Summit, which featured so many prominent speakers. I was very heartened to see so many activists working together to keep our Democracy.
Missed last week? Check out both recordings here:
Trump’s Voting Manipulation? What It Means - with Special Guest Former Democratic Majority Leader of the Congress, Dick Gephardt Wednesday, April 1st
No Kings Protests Surge Nationwide! What Happens Next? Friday, April 3rd, was me answering questions on my livestream.
This Week’s Cults, Culture & Coercion Podcast
Holy Disobedience: Sex, Sin, and Secrets in the Biggest Church No One Knows - with Melissa Duge Spiers
One of the high-control organizations that believes it has the right to torture young people into heteronormative behavior is the Adventists, an authoritarian, right-wing offshoot of Christianity. In this week’s Cults, Culture & Coercion podcast, Holy Disobedience: Sex, Sin, and Secrets in the Biggest Church No One Knows, I speak with author Melissa Duge Spiers about her memoir of that title, her time in Adventism, and how this surprisingly large organization controls every aspect of its members’ lives. Few people understand how influential this cult is in being anti-sex, anti gay, and promoting conversion “therapy.”
Listen on Apple | Spotify | Watch on YouTube
Read my Substack post about the interview here.
As always, please let us know what you think about these pieces or what you’d like to see us discuss in the future. Thanks so much!
Abraham Lincoln said, “Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us dare to do our duty as we understand it.” Message received.
We are habitually behaving as if right makes might — as if the intrinsic value of every human is equal to the intrinsic value of every other human — by exception, or, by default, we are habitually behaving as if might makes right. To paraphrase Aristotle (384-322 BC), we are what we repeatedly do. Morality, then, is not an act, but a good habit. And if one does not form the good habit through deliberate practice, then by default, one is forming the bad “immorality” habit.
Our “moral” traditions — science, democracy, justice, journalism, capitalism, the world’s (large and small) religions, etc. — are civilization’s structural components. The weaker they are, the greater the risk to civilization’s health and survival.
The justice system failed in this “conversion therapy” judgement because only one of nine Supreme Court Justices has done an adequate job of deliberately practicing morality. And that is terrible, but I identify as a member of the scientific community, not the justice system, so I have a more immediate concern.
My “E15” essay describes seven famous stories of entire scientific communities behaving as if the purpose of science is not to get to the truth and is instead to get “our” way. For the record, seven famous stories are just the tip of the “famous story” iceberg, and the famous stories are the tip of a much larger iceberg.
I’m suggesting that we, the scientific community, get our act together first. Otherwise, how can we even claim to know how to have a positive impact on the other moral traditions?
My essay: https://jamesrcarey.substack.com/p/why-scientists-are-expert-problem?r=2nayrh.
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