11th Circuit rules that bans on anti-LGBTQ "conversion therapy" violate the First Amendment

[Del Tachi]

Content-based restrictions on speech invite strict scrutiny, whodathunk?

[Del Tachi]

However to counter this, it's proven that you can't force change your sexuality (it can naturally shift over the course of a person's life, which is very different) so wouldn't adult conversion therapy technically fall foul of misleading/false advertising laws?

Sexual orientation is a Freudian psychological concept that was made up in the 1890s.  That the current liberal gospel requires a relatively new theoretical invention be regarded as an immutable human characteristic is as uninformed and uncritical as it is radical.  If you reject or critique this orthodoxy, then you are invariably labeled a bigot or homophobe.

If, like you say, your sexual orientation can naturally evolve or change over the course of your lifetime (presumably from changes in brain physiology) then there is no reason these same changes can't be induced as a result of drugs or other interventions (i.e., conversion therapy.)  In fact, it is the insistence on sexual orientation as the modality of human sexual expression that even makes conversion therapy theoretically possible. 

[Del Tachi]

The idea that Freud invented sexual orientation is pretty far off.

Freud did not himself first theorize sexual orientation as a concept, to be sure, but his deterministic theories of psychosexual development put him in a certain kinship with psychologists (like Krafft-Ebing) who studied genetic, physiological and environmental factors and their interactions to arrive at a scientific "sexual orientation."  This type of research continues today, often with immense public interest.  Sexual orientation theory reflects a hyper-modern drive to pathologize human sexual behavior/variation, which is the exact same type of drive that gave us fascist conceptions of single-race utopias too, after all  

While sexual orientation does not exactly exist - nor does race, for that matter - people perceive it as existing and act as if it exists. Such actions result in it actually seeming to exist. To reject or critique this does not make you a bigot, but someone who refuses to admit facts. We ought then to understand that sexual orientation does exist, or at least a person can be almost solely sexually attracted to one gender. This seems to develop during puberty, and there is very little evidence supporting it changing after puberty or being changed by any outside factors during puberty.

Something "seeming to exist" makes it a fact?  lolwut?  It "seemed" that sexual orientation didn't exist before anyone started talking about it in the 19th century, and (like all other theories) sexual orientation will once again be updated/fall by the wayside when something comes along to challenge it.  I suppose something seeming to exist makes it real in a sense, but only because people start thinking/acting like it does.  

I never said I "rejected" sexual orientation in the way you imply.  It simply is what it is, a way of describing an (observable?  unobservable?) long-term and persistant attraction to certain genders*.  If describing such is what you want to do, then the language of sexual orientation is fine to use.  But there's no a priori reason to think that describing such is the only or best way to conceptualize human sexuality (i.e., why even talk about individuals being "sexually oriented" to specific genders?  couldn't we just as easily be "sexually oriented" to certain hair colors?)  I happen to be of the antiquated opinion that who you choose to have sex with, date, marry and/or reproduce with is a personal decision wrought with moral/spiritual consequence, regardless of what scientific theories of sexual orientation may say about our agency over our sexual desires.  

*which, funnily enough, if sexual orientation is imputed onto people based on their genetic make-up or brain chemistry...but "gender" is socially defined and constructed...then it means that...a supposedly natural predisposition kneels to our recently invented conceptions of.....#REF!

To allow experiments to be run on children, so we can satisfy scientific curiosity as to whether or not something as personal and intimate as an individual’s sexual orientation can be noticeably altered? That fails virtually every ethical test in the book.

That you describe sexual orientation as too "personal" and "intimate" to attempt to change is exactly what reveals the superb reasoning in this opinion.  The real issue for liberals isn't that sexual orientation can't be changed (in theory) but the political, social or moral belief that it shouldn't be changed.  Viewed in this light, it's obvious to see that restrictions on conversion talk therapy (even for minors) while other types of sexual counselling are allowed is a content-based regulation of speech in violation of the First Amendment.  

[Del Tachi]

That's super.

The moral/spiritual consequence of being married to my husband is amazing. The love is strong, the mutual support is beneficial to my health, the cuddles rock and the sex is legendary. Disprove it.

Uhm...what?  I'm not trying to disprove it, lol.  I think in your eagerness to get an "own" in on a Deep South, blue avi you've either willfully or ignorantly misread my post

My point is that we shouldn't have to pathologize our same-sex attraction and relationships into an immutable, biologically-dictated "sexual orientation" to validate them.  You have all those things with your husband because you chose them not because you were only "born this way," and you should be proud of that.  The point that you latched onto in my post is only that, like any other choice, there are moral/spiritual consequences (positive or negative) to who we have sex with/date/marry.  And not "consequences" of the Heaven/Hell type mind you, but "this world" consequences involving our mental or spiritual health, community, or kids and family.  We should relish in this moral agency, and stop trying to cheapen our own sexual experience as a deviation from some social/historical norm.   

[Del Tachi]

And I do wonder whether he would approve of a future decision by a conservative Supreme Court majority to overrule Obergefell v. Hodges.

Firstly, I am at a loss as to what kind of fact pattern would even allow the Supreme Court to categorically reconsider Obergefell.  Secondly, a Constitutional right to same-sex marriage does not require enshrining sexual orientation as a protected class, and I don't think Obergefell attempts to take it there.  Kennedy's opinion describes that the Due Process protection "extends to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy" not only to the "immutable characteristics" that civil rights jurisprudence of the Warren Court often relied on.   

If sexual orientation is an invented concept-and marriage itself, is an invented concept-then doesn't that mean that it's form can be changed again?

Yes, and almost certainly will.  Obergefell only says that marriage (in whatever form) cannot be a right excluded to same-sex couples.   

[Del Tachi]

-SNIP-

I think there's actually a pretty limited area of disagreement between us here; I think we're mainly somewhat talking past each other because we're each "zoomed out" to different levels, so to speak.

The point I initially raised is this thread is if sexual orientation is at least somewhat determined by a variety of biological or environmental factors and their interactions then it must logically follow that manipulation of these factors could (in theory) change someone's sexual orientation.  Conversion therapy only exists because in order to be "reoriented" one must first be "oriented."  If we simply ditched the conceptualization of human sexual preference as "sexual orientation" and saw it (more appropriately, IMO) as a personal choice deserving validity and respect, then would we even have this problem?

Too many uncritical liberals try to have it both ways.  To them sexual orientation is BOTH a biologically-determined characteristic AND incapable of being altered by any possible therapy, intervention or treatment.  That kind of duality doesn't make any sense.  If the more appropriate question is, as you suggest and I agree, whether we should act to change one's sexual orientation, then it's quite easy to see how regulations on conversion therapy could run afoul of Free Speech protections.