LIFESITE News reports:

A federal judge has temporarily barred California from enforcing its ban on reparative therapy for children and teens. California is the first state to place restrictions on reparative therapy, which is designed to help people with same-sex attraction fight their homosexual urges and develop healthy relationships with the opposite sex. Homosexual activists claim the therapy harms same-sex attracted youth by making them feel as if their sexual urges are bad or wrong, leading them to depression or even suicide.

Governor Jerry Brown signed a law banning reparative therapy for use with minors in October, calling it “quackery.” The ban is set to go into effect January 1.

The law is suspended pending a full trial.

—- Comments —-

Terry Morris writes:

I think your concluding sentence is factually incorrect. The article you link states that the law is suspended only for the three plaintiffs named in the suit, meaning that they may continue to provide therapy to their clients, while others not named must obey the law pending the outcome of trial.

But at the risk of sounding as though I come down on the wrong side of this issue, I cannot not point out that here is yet another case in which the extra-constitutional, out-of-thin-air invention of the lawless federal judiciary – the so called incorporation doctrine – has been used to assert and establish federal jurisdiction in a matter that without this invention of the Courts would remain where it ought to remain, to be decided at the state level, not the federal level. And all based on the idea that a group of psychotherapists are being denied their inalienable right to free speech. This intrusion by the federal judiciary goes into the same category as such cases as the Mortal Combat case, and the case involving Chicago’s handgun ban from a few years ago, to cite just two among many.

In the introduction to his excellent book Government By Judiciary, the Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Raoul Berger writes:

“I regard segregation as a blot on our society, and before I began to study the reapportionment issue I was taken with the beguiling slogan “one man, one vote.” But almost thirty-five years ago I wrote of a decision that responded to my desires that I liked it no better when the Court read my predilections into the Constitution than when the Four Horsemen read in theirs. Against the fulfillment of cherished ideals that turns on fortuitous appointments must be weighed the cost of warping the Constitution, of undermining “the rule of law.” The Court has shown in the past that the Constitution can also be twisted to frustrate the needs of democracy.”

Elsewhere Mr. Berger insists that “repeated violations of the Constitution do not make them constitutional but merely compound the evil.” Quite so. I tend to think that what the court is actually saying in the case is that the need to keep this particular revenue stream flowing outweighs the homosexualist ‘concern’ that such therapy is psychologically damaging to ‘child-homosexuals.’ But I’m, admittedly, a real cynic when it comes to things like this. I don’t think the government gives two hoots about any particular person’s mental health in reality. All it really cares about is all that any totalitarian-statist government cares about – POWER – the absolute kind.

Laura writes:

Thank you for the correction. You are right, the law is suspended only for the therapists involved in the suit.

Yes, another instance of overweening federal control.

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