Sunday, November 22, 2020

ARE WE SEEING AN ‘AMY CONEY BARRETT SCOTUS REGRESSIVE EFFECT’ ON THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY?

Is this a sign of movement toward a conservative regression?

BACKGROUND

A November 20, 2020, article cites a Boca Raton, Florida (of course) federal appeals court repeal (2-1) of a ban on gay conversion therapy as a “violation of First Amendment right to free speech”. Both majority judges are Trump appointees.  This repeal struck this blogger as a not-just-coincidental indication that the recent addition of ‘originalist’, Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court might encourage lower court conservative judges to begin to dismantle the gains made by the LGBTQ community. It is very pertinent that the arguments for recognizing gay conversion therapy were robed in religious costume: 

The therapists said their clients typically had "sincerely held religious beliefs conflicting with homosexuality," and sought counseling to conform their identities and behaviors with those beliefs.

TO THE POINT:

This blogger references back the warning of October 19, 2020, (AMY CONEY BARRETT ‘S ‘ORIGINALISM’ WILL PUSH AMERICA BACK TO 1800s VICTORIANISM) noting the potential dangers to social balance and gains made by the American LGBTQ community, from her views expressed in the US Senate hearings on her nomination to the US Supreme Court, the now SCOTUS Associate Justice, Amy Coney Barrett, described the LGBTQ community as essentially a lifestyle of “sexual preference”, a statement which this blogger challenged as being “scientifically invalid”, harmful to members of that community and potentially opening the door to re-activate the  false notions and marketing of so-called “conversion” therapies. This is supported by a brief look at the following excerpts from the Wikipedia article on conversion therapy:

the advancement of conversion therapy may cause social harm by disseminating unscientific views about sexual orientation.[10] 

And, 

In 2001, United States Surgeon General David Satcher issued a report stating that "there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed".[15]

Further, the same article gives examples of some of the torturing, so-called conversion ‘therapies’:

Techniques used in conversion therapy in the United States and Western Europe have included ice-pick lobotomies;[3][4][16][17][18][19] chemical castration with hormonal treatment;[20] aversive treatments, such as "the application of electric shock to the hands and/or genitals"; "nausea-inducing drugs ...
Currently, the invalid concept of sexuality as a preference or choice ... or at least a reparable state of mind has created a new type of charlatan, the spiritual interventionist and psychoanalytic ‘reconditionist’ - both are newer faces of the same old ‘snake oil’ industry, and still owe their existence to the false description of sexuality as a “preference” (ala Amy Coney Barrett): 

The point being made here is that ‘sexuality as a choice or preference’ is scientifically debunked and harmful.  

But we shall see if Judge Barrett can evolve in breadth and wisdom under her new, national, diversity accountability to a nation of real and broadly diverse  peoples.

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