PHILADELPHIA — New Jersey asked a federal appeals court to uphold a state law banning licensed therapists from seeking to change a child’s sexual orientation, likening such talk therapy to castration and lobotomy.
The 2013 statute prohibits psychiatrists, therapists and social workers from engaging in practices designed to change the sexual orientation of anyone under age 18.
The state is seeking the imprimatur of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia after the U.S. Supreme Court last month declined to hear a constitutional challenge to a similar law.
“This law imposes the ideology of the state,” Mathew Staver, an attorney for two licensed counselors who claim the law violates free speech protections, said at a court hearing Wednesday.
“The state is regulating what happens in the privacy of the counseling room and only one viewpoint of samesex attraction is permitted.”
New Jersey and California are the only states to adopt a ban on such therapy. In signing the law last year, Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has opposed same-sex marriage, said homosexuality is inborn and efforts to change a minor’s sexual orientation posed health risks.
Arguments focused on whether the therapy qualifies as speech, which is protected by the First Amendment, or conduct. Talk therapy is the technique used to deliver a particular treatment, Susan Scott, an attorney for the state, said. The therapy is just another version of conversion techniques used in the past, including lobotomy, she added.
“Talk is the vehicle by which they’re delivering the treatment,” Scott said.
“The line is drawn when spoken word is meant to effect change and not just exchange ideas.”