Joe.My.God. LGBT News
From the far-right LifeSiteNews:
An Orthodox Jewish psychotherapist in Brooklyn is suing New York City in federal court over its ban on counseling to treat unwanted homosexual attraction or gender confusion, arguing that the law violates the First Amendment’s guaranteed right to free speech.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing Dr. Dovid Schwartz of the Chabad Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish Community in his suit against a 2018 law prohibiting paid services that “seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or seek to change a person’s gender identity to conform to the sex of such individual that was recorded at birth.” First, second, and repeat violations are punished by fines of $1,000, $5,000, or $10,000, respectively.
ADF says Schwartz has served numerous patients who came to him seeking the ability to experience heterosexual attraction in order to have families that conform to their religious beliefs. Schwartz treats them by simply speaking with and listening to them.
From the far-right PJ Media:
Dr. Schwartz is far from the first to challenge these restrictive counseling bans. Last week, ex-gay psychotherapist Christopher Doyle sued Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.) and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh over Senate Bill 1028, Maryland’s law banning sexual orientation change efforts therapy for minors.
These “conversion therapy” bans are “all very similar,” Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, told PJ Media in an interview Wednesday. “They’ve all prohibited counselors from providing — and clients from receiving — any counsel to change their unwanted same-sex attractions, behavior, or identity, or gender confusion.”
“This forces counselors to override the objective and autonomous will of the client when the client asks them to help counsel the to change behavior and address their unwanted feelings,” Staver explained.
RELATED: The Chabad Lubavitch sect is relatively famous in NYC for their annual “Mitzvah Tank” parade of Winnebagos and similar recreational vehicles which have been turned into rolling recruiting stations. The sect believes that a rabbi leader who died in 1994 will return as the world’s messiah.