This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.
Editor's Note: This story contains mention of self-harm. If you or someone you know is considering suicide or other acts of self-harm, please visit 988Colorado.com, or call or text 988 from your cell phone for free, confidential, and immediate support.
Brad Reubendale grew up in a tight-knit, conservatively Christian family. Which made it painful when he finally acknowledged to himself at 19 years old that he is gay. He confided in his brother and told him he wanted to change.
“We did research to get rid of this problem that had long haunted me, condemning me to hell,” Reubendale recalled.
They found a group that claimed its treatment could change people’s sexual orientation. He ordered books and went to therapy. Looking back, Reubendale, who now lives in Denver, said the program fed his internalized homophobia and turned his mind against himself. He said one of the hardest things was feeling like he was always on the edge of making a change, and never getting there.
“It was the idea that if you do this work correctly, your actual orientation will change. That was what was so damaging about it.”
The continuing disappointment led him to a dark place.
“I made a plan. I isolated myself. It would look like an accident. I was not gonna leave a note, just a destroyed car and another dead gay Christian.”
Reubendale said that even though he went through the program of his own free will, it feels like his therapist wasn’t acting in good faith, because they never mentioned that there’s no science to support this approach.
“What was missing is the data that it doesn't work, and the data that it can actually cause serious mental health issues for people who go through that.”
Before he could act on his planning, Reubendale had a breakthrough – that being gay wasn’t wrong or toxic. That’s when, he said, the darkness in his mind parted. At that moment he knew he would survive, but getting past the shame he learned in therapy hasn’t been easy, and he’s become an advocate for ending the practice of conversion therapy, including testifying at the Colorado statehouse in favor of a 2019 bill banning licensed therapists from using the practice on minors.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of that law. Attorneys for a Colorado Springs-based counselor argue that banning conversion therapy restricts the First Amendment rights of therapists.
“I help people who come to see me have conversations to clarify what their goals and their values are and to identify the ways in which they would like to live a life that is more fulfilling and more satisfying and more in line with who God created them to be,” explained Kaley Chiles in an online video about her case.
While she’s never been sanctioned by the state for breaking its ban on conversion therapy, Chiles said the law has led her to self censor, and is preventing her from living out her Christian beliefs in her daily life, including through her work.
The conservative legal powerhouse Alliance for Defending is representing Chiles. ADF opened its doors around thirty years ago to fight for conservative Christian values through the courts. James Dobson, the long-time head of Focus on the Family, was one of its founders. The group directly employs more than 80 attorneys and claims to have five thousand more in its network.
This isn’t the first time ADF has challenged Colorado’s LGBTQ protections in front of the Supreme Court. It successfully represented a web designer who refuses to make wedding websites for same sex couples and a Lakewood baker who won’t take cake commissions that violate his Christian beliefs. All told, ADF counts 16 wins at the Supreme Court since 2011, most notably, its leading role in overturning Roe v. Wade.
Jake Warner, a senior counsel with the Alliance for Defending Freedom, complains that Colorado’s conversion therapy ban allows counselors to support youth who are “undergoing gender transition or same sex attraction, but doesn't let counselors assist people who want something else.”
“It forbids counselors from helping kids regain comfort with their biological sex. And that's viewpoint discrimination and it censors speech in violation of the First Amendment.”
While ADF sees the law as an attack on free speech, Colorado will argue that the ban falls firmly under its authority to regulate medical practices, since talk therapists must have a license to practice in the state.
“We are acting in the way that states have always done to protect our consumers. And the idea that there could be some First Amendment attack on this is unprecedented and dangerous,” said Colorado’s Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser.
“Colorado, like every state, regulates substandard care through its malpractice laws and through a licensing system that says, if you're providing care that is harmful, you can be disciplined for it.”
Weiser said the law is about preventing professionals from using a discredited medical approach, not stifling free speech.
Major psychological governing bodies have concluded that the practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender expression or identity is harmful. The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its manual of mental disorders decades ago. More recently, a United Nations report concluded conversion therapy “can amount to torture” and called for it to be banned worldwide.
When Colorado passed its law six years ago, more than a dozen states already had similar bans on their books. Today the number is more than twenty, and includes some relatively conservative states. Two years ago, Republican lawmakers in Utah voted unanimously to codify a conversion therapy ban.
While Colorado has seen heated debates over LGBTQ bills in recent sessions, the 2019 bill didn’t attract that kind of opposition.
“It wasn't a blockbuster kind of a policy. And compared to some of the other things that we've had, where tempers have gotten high and there's been name calling and yelling, this never really got to that level,” said Democratic Rep. Brianna Titone. She wasn’t a main sponsor of the legislation, but was a strong supporter. She’s also Colorado’s only transgender lawmaker.
At the time, the bill even had the backing of some prominent Republicans, including Colorado’s then attorney general Cynthia Coffman.
“Those who make claims that they can reverse or cure a young person who is LGBTQ are in fact committing a fraud on the people of Colorado. And worse than that, they are harming young people in this state who identify as LGBTQ,” Coffman testified at a committee hearing in support of the legislation.
The law focuses purely on licensed therapists, allowing families to still seek informal counseling through personal or religious channels, like going to their minister or to a family friend.
Titone said the law’s limited scope disappointed some of its backers.
“A lot of people were upset that this was a concession that we made, but because we were trying to honor the First Amendment and make sure we were having a policy that was going to hold up, that was a concession that was made to avoid that free speech argument,” she said.
But Jordan Lorence, an attorney with the conservative Christian advocacy organization First Liberty Institute, argues people who want their gender and sexual identity to match their religious beliefs are entitled to the help of professional counselors.
“Many people believe that they were born male or female, that these are unchangeable biological realities,” said Lorence. “This is a legitimate point of view that people can live consistently with, and counselors should be there to help them live that way.”
Lorence argues it’s not compassionate to deny a child and their family the freedom to pursue their own counseling goals.
For both sides of this issue the stakes are high in the Colorado case. Advocates for the LGBTQ community fear that if the Justices overturn Colorado’s conversion therapy law it could roll back protections for LGBTQ youth across the country.
“The worst thing that could happen is for the court to view these laws through some sort of current politicized lens. We're all so divided now. There's such a toxic political environment, especially there's so much anti-LGBT sentiment being voiced now,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for LGBTQ Rights in San Francisco.
Minter hopes the Supreme Court will take the voices of those directly affected by the issue seriously, and to consider its own precedents. He points to the court’s recent decision upholding Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for minors. In that 6-3 ruling, conservative Justices left policies around healthcare for transgender youth in the hands of the states.
While the two cases are rooted in different parts of the Constitution, Minter sees them as related. In the Tennessee ruling, the Justices concluded that voters and their elected representatives should be the ones to set medical policy, not the court.
“So if (the Supreme Court’s) gonna be fair, and intellectually honest, they should apply that here too,” said Minter.
After Tuesday’s oral arguments the case will be in the hands of the court, which must rule by next June.
CPR's Caitlyn Kim contributed to this story.
