This story was reported and written by Radio IQ.
A religious counselor in Front Royal County asked a state judge Thursday to block Virginia’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. The controversial practice has been banned in 20 states, but courts have fallen on either side of the issue.
Virginia passed a ban on conversion therapy, the practice of a licensed therapist trying to change a minor’s sexuality or gender identity through counseling, in 2020. That was long after Brennan, we’re only using his first name for privacy reasons, got out of an ex-gay program he entered into voluntarily.
Brennan knew he was gay in first grade but was told by friends and faith leaders it was wrong. At the age of 21 he voluntarily entered a program in coastal Virginia after he started going to a church that told him the practice would send him to hell.
“I started pursuing conversation therapy as a way to fix my attraction to men so I could avoid being set on fire,” he told Radio IQ in an interview.
Weekly therapy meetings turned into a stay at a monastery. He spent four years in the facility, praying and sharing his deepest sexual fantasies as a form of therapy to a room full of fellow attempted converts. He remembered running showers as hot as imaginable in an attempt to remind himself of what the fires of hell would feel like.
He said he was gung-ho about “getting right with God” for the first two years, but after that he became emotionally and spiritually exhausted.
“These feelings hadn’t gone away even a little bit,” he said, recounting three daily sessions of group prayer in addition to private prayer sessions. “And I’m not just going to church, I’m living at the church, 24/7.”
And while those feelings nagged at him, it all came crumbling down when two male pastors who oversaw his program got caught having sex together.
“I’d been looking up to these men as ‘this is the example if you just keep pressing on with God, you’ll be straight,’” Brennan said. “And here they are. They got caught fooling around.”
It took years, but he finally found community in Richmond and now he’s living happily as the gay man he knew he always was.
Brennan is arguably one of the lucky ones: a report from the Trevor Project found those who go through ex-gay therapy have higher changes of substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts.
But in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Henrico County, counselors Janet and John Raymond said the ban violates their freedom of speech and religion under Virginia’s constitution.
Josh Hetzler is their attorney with the Founding Freedoms Law Center.
“They desire to continue counseling children, including the increasing number of those who are experiencing confusion about their sexual identity in a culture that is actively pushing them away from God’s design,” Hetzler said.
But Virginia legislators, including those who are gay and helped pass the 2020 effort, think the law is on solid ground.
Senator Adam Ebbin was the first openly gay member of Virginia's legislature. He said the law was written to meet American Psychiatric Association standards.
“Conversion therapy is a dangerous and out-of-date practice that only serves to ruin young lives,” Ebbin told Radio IQ.
And Delegate Patrick Hope, who was a patron of the House bill, also pointed to medical standards that condemn the practice.
“I have no doubt the courts will reject this hateful attempt to reinstate a practice harmful to Virginia’s children,” Hope said before saying on social media: “Abusing children is not protected under Virginia’s Constitution.”
Camilla Taylor, Deputy Director for Litigation at the national LGBTQ rights group Lambda Legal also suggested licensing requirements have a history of skirting First Amendment claims.
"Licensing requirements for doctors that ensure that they practice medicine according to standards of care, abide by ethical requirements for the profession, and do no harm to patients are both constitutional and unremarkable," she told Radio IQ. "Doctors do not have an unfettered right to peddle snake oil or so-called 'conversion therapy,' which modern science tells us doesn’t work, and can be traumatizing and extremely harmful, especially to young people."
But questions remain as to whether Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares will defend the law.
When Virignia’s ban on same-sex marriage was challenged, then-Attorney General Mark Herring refused to defend it. Third party Chirstian groups intervened to defend the law, but it was struck down in 2014.
“I fully expect Virginia’s Attorney General will fulfill his constitutional duties to which he swore an oath and vigorously defend the Virginia statute,” Delegate Hope warned.
Family Foundation of Virginia President Victoria Cobb said she had spoken with the AG’s office ahead of filing, but he did not share details about a future legal strategy.
Requests for comment on the dispute sent to Miyares were not returned by press time.
As for the legal challenge itself, last year’s ruling protecting a Christian public school teacher’s right to misgender a trans West Point County student may leave open the door for similar discrimination against -or lack of protections for- LGBTQ kids who receive counseling.
“We hold that religious liberties in this Commonwealth do not vanish simply because a purely secular law says so — no matter its impartiality toward specific religions or its impassivity toward religion generally,” wrote Justice D. Arthur Kelse in the 2023 opinion in Vlaming v. West Point School Board.
“There’s no such thing as professional speech under First Amendment jurisprudence,” Hetzler said Thursday, pointing to Vlaming as grounds for their suit.
And federal courts have come out on either side of the issue, with one appeals court upholding Washington state’s ban on the practice, but another striking a locality in Florida trying to do the same.
A request sent to the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the split was denied last year.
But other state-level efforts have been successful. A jury trial in New Jersey found one conversion therapy clinic violated the state’s anti-fraud laws after two recipients of the treatment never lost their same-sex attraction.
In the end, that’s Brennan thinks fraud claims against conversion therapy are probably right.
“Even in the height of conversion therapy, I still felt attraction to men with the vigor I always have and still have,” he said.
