Opinion

Conversion Therapy Ban Is A Minors’ Rights Issue, Too

posztos / Shutterstock.com

Bennett Haselton Freelance Writer
Font Size:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed a California law to stand that banned so-called “conversion therapy” for minors – “therapy” with the stated purpose of turning gay kids straight.  Many arguments against the ban have argued for parents’ rights to control the treatment of their teens until they turn 18; arguments in favor of the ban have focused on the consensus among psychologists that conversion therapy doesn’t work, and can have harmful side effects.

Rarely heard in these debates is an argument for the individual civil rights of the teenagers themselves: What if they just don’t want to go?

Now, to the average person, this position raises alarm bells for being far outside the mainstream, but it’s really just the principle of individual freedom carried to its logical conclusion.  My argument is that individual freedom should be the default, unless it needs to be superseded for reasons of possible harm to oneself, or harm to others.  Out of context, most people would agree with this statement – but they might waver if they thought about how it applies to the rights of minors.  We let parents pick what movies their 7-year-old can watch, because 7-year-olds might harm themselves if they made that decision entirely on their own; we let parents decide whether their 16-year-old can get married, because the likelihood is so high that they’ll regret it later if they make the decision without some parental guidance.

But in the case of parents who want to force their teen to get electric shocks to their junk as part of “conversion therapy” — or even just to force their teen to listen to a therapist harangue them about being gay — if the teen wants to say “fuck this” and refuse the treatment and walk out, what possibly “safety” argument could there be, for stopping the teen from making their own decision? Quite the opposite — most psychologists would agree that it’s probably safer to allow the teen to quit the treatment, than to force them through it.

At this point, some would argue that as long as parents are paying for their teen’s room and board, they ought to have the right to make these decisions (even including forcing a teen into conversion therapy), regardless of what is objectively beneficial.  I doubt that many people believe this argument literally.  If a husband is paying for his wife’s room and board and other expenses, does that give him the right to force her into conversion therapy – or even to snoop through her browser history?  Presumably not, so if someone believes that parents have the right to do these things, that right would have to come from something other than the fact of who’s paying for what.

Some others argue that parents’ right to control their children under 18 isn’t a matter of costs and benefits (consequentialist ethics) so much as it is a matter of a principle that has to be followed regardless of the consequences (deontological ethics). Well, by definition you can’t argue with someone’s “first principles.” But I’m skeptical that people really feel this way – for one thing, if you ask someone about a restriction in minors’ freedoms that does make some logical sense, they would likely give you the real reason: “You can’t get a driver’s license at 12 because even 12-year-olds who pass the test are likely to be unsafe drivers, and there aren’t a lot of benefits to letting 12-year-olds drive.” But ask why a teen shouldn’t have the right to refuse conversion therapy, and if the person switches to saying, “Well, that’s just the way it is…” then perhaps their conviction on that point is a lot weaker.

So, if you’ve never thought about this position before, ask yourself if you really do believe that individual freedom should be the default, unless it has to be superseded for reasons of safety – and, if so, why that should not be the case for people under 18 as well. It’s easy to come up with reasons why we don’t allow 8-year-olds to play with real firearms, or allow 12-year-olds to get tattoos, but the point is that there are reasons for these rules – real reasons, in terms of self-harm and costs and benefits, not just variations of “That’s just the way it is, and we’ve always done it that way.”  If you ask someone why a teen should not have the fundamental human right to refuse conversion therapy, and the best they can come up with is “That’s just the way it is,” perhaps that’s a sign that it’s an unsupportable position that society should start moving away from.

Tags : lgbt
Bennett Haselton

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel