To be fair, a lot of psychology over the past couple of centuries has been an effort to find a secular substitute for the concept of religion serving to "perfect" man. While psychology has overall been a beneficial craft, in pursuit of a mythical universal form of perfection, it has had a distressing tendency to pathologize a wide variety of behaviors and preferences simply because they are not the usual ones most people have, and has done so without regard to whether they cause harm to that person or to others.
That aside dealt with, on to this specific case.
- First, it narrowly applies only to purely speech-based SOCE*, so it doesn't apply to SOCE in general, just one particular form of it that has direct First Amendment implications well beyond the specific topic area of SOCE.
- Second, based on what I read in the opinion, I think narrowly-crafted regulations to ensure that minors are seeking SOCE of their own accord and not because their parents are insisting upon it would likely pass muster with the majority here, and such regulations definitely should be allowed and passed in my opinion, not just for SOCE, but a wide variety of counseling topics.
- Third, the weakest part of the dissent was the objection that the plaintiffs could simply move their practice elsewhere if they wished to continue it and thus were not suffering irreparable harm. Even if you think the rest of the dissent was perfect, I would hope that no one else would agree that it's okay to ban speech in some jurisdictions so long as it is allowed elsewhere.
* I use the inelegant term SOCE (Sexual Orientation Change Effort) rather than "conversion therapy" because that's the term that was consistently used in both the opinion and the dissent.
Also, please try to keep vitriol directed at opinions, not people. I like not having to moderate this board that much. Moderating two posts and editing a third because it quoted a moderated post is more work than I usually have to do here.
