{"id":253138,"date":"2026-04-05T18:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T18:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/253138\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T18:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T18:15:09","slug":"supreme-court-puts-lgbtq-kids-in-danger-with-legal-double-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/253138\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court puts LGBTQ+ kids in danger with legal double standard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Supreme<\/a>The Supreme Court building in Washington. (File photo by J. Scott Applewhite\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never forgotten the feeling of my heart pounding through my chest as I worked up the courage to come out as LGBTQ to my Army veteran father.<\/p>\n

\"Opinion<\/a><\/p>\n

As an attorney, I had spent years taking on powerful interests \u2014 fighting to protect people living with HIV and AIDS across the Deep South and standing up to those trying to roll back LGBTQ+ rights. But coming out was different. For millions of LGBTQ+ people, it comes with a terrifying question: will the people you love still be there when you tell them who you are?<\/p>\n

I was lucky. My family supported me.<\/p>\n

Too many LGBTQ+ kids aren\u2019t. Some are met with rejection. Others are subjected to so-called \u201cconversion therapy\u201d \u2014 a practice designed to shame them into changing who they are.<\/p>\n

And instead of protecting those children, the United States Supreme Court<\/a> has now put them in greater danger.<\/p>\n

In overturning Colorado\u2019s ban on conversion therapy for minors, the court didn\u2019t just get it wrong morally \u2014 it created a troubling legal double standard that applies only to the LGBTQ+ community. Separate, and unequal.<\/p>\n

For over a century, the law has been clear: States are legally allowed to intervene when providers are doing harm to their patients.<\/p>\n

We accept this everywhere else. A doctor cannot tell an anorexic patient to stop eating. A psychiatrist cannot advise a severely depressed patient to end their life. In each of these situations, the state can step in to suspend or remove a practitioner\u2019s license \u2014 because professional licenses come with a duty to protect the public.<\/p>\n

No one claims that doctors or lawyers have a First Amendment right to harm the people they serve.<\/p>\n

But here, the Supreme Court said that LGBTQ+ people can be treated this way.<\/p>\n

By framing conversion therapy as \u201cspeech,\u201d the court elevated a therapist\u2019s personal views over a patient\u2019s right to safe, evidence-based care \u2014 even when that \u201ccare\u201d has been widely condemned as harmful by every major medical association in the country.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear about what that means.<\/p>\n

Conversion therapy isn\u2019t just ineffective \u2014 it\u2019s dangerous. It is linked to increased depression, anxiety and suicide among LGBTQ+ youth. Young people subjected to it are significantly more likely to attempt suicide.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why nearly 30 states, including California, banned the practice for minors in the first place.<\/p>\n

But now, the Supreme Court has opened the door to unravel those protections \u2014 and sent a chilling message: the rules designed to protect patients from harm don\u2019t apply equally to everyone.<\/p>\n

The consequences will be felt by young people sitting in therapy rooms, trusting adults who are supposed to help them \u2014 not harm them.<\/p>\n

And this decision doesn\u2019t exist in a vacuum. Since the start of this year alone, lawmakers have introduced hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills \u2014 targeting health care, censoring classrooms, banning books and even forcing teachers to out students to their parents, regardless of the risk.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen the impact firsthand: young people carrying fear and pain, parents fighting desperately to protect their kids, families pushed to the brink by policies that treat their children as political targets.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent my life fighting back.<\/p>\n

In Mississippi, I founded a program providing free legal representation to people facing discrimination in housing, employment and health care. When extremists tried to strip LGBTQ+ books from libraries here in San Diego County, we organized, raised funds and put those stories back on the shelves where they belonged.<\/p>\n

Because every American deserves dignity, safety and the freedom to live their life openly \u2014 to love who they love, to be who they are, without fear.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m proud to be LGBTQ+. I\u2019m proud of the life I\u2019ve built and the family I\u2019m creating.<\/p>\n

And I refuse to stand by while a dangerous double standard puts the next generation at risk.<\/p>\n

We cannot allow the law to say that some patients are less worthy of protection than others. We cannot allow \u201cfree speech\u201d to be twisted into a license to harm.<\/p>\n

I will fight in Congress to pass the Equality Act, ensuring clear, nationwide protections against discrimination in employment, housing, education and public life.<\/p>\n

Our kids deserve better. And I will never stop fighting to protect them.<\/p>\n

Marni von Wilpert<\/a> is a San Diego City Councilwoman running to represent California\u2019s 48th congressional district in the House of Representatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court building in Washington. (File photo by J. Scott Applewhite\/Associated Press) I\u2019ve never forgotten the feeling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[110186,2434,76355,74,76,75,2214],"class_list":{"0":"post-253138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-conversion-therapy","9":"tag-lgbtq","10":"tag-marni-von-wilpert","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-san-diego-headlines","13":"tag-san-diego-news","14":"tag-supreme-court"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}