Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Christian Post reports:
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal filed by a Christian therapist against Washington state’s ban on “gay conversion therapy,” allowing the law to remain in effect. In an orders list released Monday morning, the high court declined without comment a petition for a writ of certiorari in the case of Brian Tingley v. Robert W. Ferguson, Attorney General of Washington state, et al.
The decision received separate dissenting opinions from Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Thomas claimed that Washington had “silenced one side of this debate” through state law. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously against Tingley in September 2022, with Circuit Judge Ronald M. Gould writing the court opinion.
NBC News reports:
Brian Tingley, a licensed marriage and family counselor, said the law violates his free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment because the government is seeking to dictate what he says.
Tingley, his lawyers say, “believes that the sex each person receives at conception is not an accident or error but rather a gift from God” and that sexual relationships should only occur “between one man and one woman mutually committed through marriage.”
Tingley is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group that has had recent success arguing religious rights and related cases at the court.
As I previously reported, the ADF first filed its lawsuit in May 2021 and lost in US district court in September 2021 before losing again before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2022.
According to Brian Tingley’s resume, he’s led seminars on “authentic manhood” and “true masculinity.”
Before that, he wrote and produced commercials for car dealerships, bingo halls, and county fairs.
As I’ve reported many times over the years, ex-gay torture therapists often end up rejecting their work and coming out as gay themselves. And sometimes, they are arrested for sexually assaulting their clients.
Then there are the ones that are busted trolling online for gay sex, such as the nationally prominent therapist caught cruising Manhunt in 2018 as HotNHairy72.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lead attorney was once House Speaker Mike Johnson, has advocated for criminalizing homosexuality in the United States and has provided free legal support to foreign groups seeking the same in their own countries.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Christian therapist’s free speech challenge to a Washington state ban on so-called conversion therapy aimed at changing a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.https://t.co/ZiLMCeHH0G
— FFRF (@FFRF) December 11, 2023
Given that Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh all voted to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of Washington’s ban on so-called “conversion therapy,” we know that no other justice wanted to take up this case. Gorsuch’s vote is somewhat surprising. https://t.co/EWShUNArYI
— Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) December 11, 2023