By Eliot Kleinberg, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
August 3, 2016
WEST PALM BEACH — It’s called “conversion therapy.” Advocates of it, some of whom dismiss the term altogether, say it’s a legitimate way to help people — usually teens — rid themselves of “unwanted same sex attractions.”
Rights groups say it’s forced brainwashing that doesn’t work and harms people who didn’t need any conversion at all.
Now the Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group,
is saying a planned Palm Beach County ban on such counseling for minors
is unconstitutional and the group could well sue to block it.
On June 20, the Palm Beach County Human Rights
Council, which fights discrimination, especially against
lesbian/gay/bisexual/ transgenders, asked commissioners in Palm Beach
County and the city of West Palm Beach to ban “conversion therapy.”
Council founder and President Rand Hoch told
commissioners the practice, also known as “reparative therapy,” is
“based on the erroneous assumption” that LGBT identities “are mental
disorders that can be cured through aversion treatment.”
The County Commission hasn’t yet placed the item
on any agenda, Assistant County Administrator Todd Bonlarron said this
past week. County Attorney Denise Nieman said she hoped to have an
opinion by the end of this week about whether a ban would survive a
constitutional challenge. She did say that “there’s a number of areas of
concern we have.”
Neither Bonlarron nor Nieman had a comment on the Liberty Counsel letter.
While the Liberty Counsel’s letter doesn’t say it
outright, “we would consider a legal challenge,” if commissioners
approve the ban, Mat Staver, an Orlando-based attorney for the group,
told The Palm Beach Post.
In a letter to county commissioners, Staver said
the county “has no authority to enact such an ordinance,” and even if it
did, “any such ordinance would represent a blatant violation of the
First Amendment’s most basic liberties.”
Liberty Counsel says it now is litigating several
similar cases and has persuaded legislators in several states, including
Florida, to reject state bans. Attempts in the Florida Legislature have
stalled in committee.
“If the Liberty Counsel wants to come down and
fight this, bring it on,” the Rights Council’s Hoch said last week from
Philadelphia, where he was attending the Democratic National Convention.
He said the county “absolutely” would withstand a legal challenge and
that U.S. Supreme Court already has declined to hear challenges to
similar bans.
After the Human Rights Council’s June 20 call for action, County Mayor Mary Lou Berger asked staff to research the idea.
On July 12, during public comment, the commission
heard from Julie Hamilton, who said she was a local psychotherapist and
former president of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific
Integrity.
Hamilton said people “ a r e n o t simply born
gay” and that some people can change their orientation. And she said a
ban on therapy isn’t needed because therapists already are bound by
various ethical rules. She said the proposed law would block help for
teenagers “who are distressed by their unwanted (same sex) attraction.
You are taking away hope from them.”
The Liberty Counsel letter quoted a 2014 American
College of Pediatricians statement that “the scientific literature,
however, is clear: Same-sex attractions are more fluid than fixed,
specially for adolescents — many of whom can and do change.”
The legal threat by Liberty Counsel follows a note
to commissioners from the National Task Force for Therapy Equality,
based in Arlington, Va., near Washington. It says it represents
“thousands of clients who formerly identify” as LGBT, as well as “tens
of thousands of youth, parents and facilities who experience unwanted
same-sex attractions.’
Task Force co-coordinator Christopher J. Doyle
wrote that “activists labeling this counseling ‘conversion therapy’ are
using scare tactics to silence youth, and their families, that seek help
for sexual and gender and identify conflicts. I hope this body makes
the right and fair decision to support all youth and respect the wide
range and diversity of sexual values they hold.”
And commissioners heard from the South Florida
Association of Christian Counselors, a group of 569 pastors, Christian
leaders, and therapists and counselors, most in Palm Beach County; its
board includes Palm Beach Atlantic University professor Henry Virkler.
The coalition said individuals with what it calls distressing and
conflicting same-sex attractions “have the right to obtain professional
assistance for living a life that is incongruent with their faith,
values and goals.”
Liberty Counsel says it’s a nonprofit group with
offices in Orlando and Washington and in Lynchburg, Va., home of Liberty
University, the evangelistic Christian college founded by Jerry
Falwell. While it has no direct tie to the school, Staver is the former
dean of its law school.
