TALKING IT OUT:
A Win for Christian Counselors and Religious Liberty (Jonathon Van Maren, April 2, 2026, First Things)
Colorado’s 2019 “Minor Conversion Therapy Law” defined “conversion therapy” as “attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” It banned treatments, including talk therapy or counseling, that could help minors resolve their gender dysphoria and align their identity with their biological sex.
These laws have been sold by conflating coercive practices with helping gender-confused children—many of whom will have been deliberately confused by LGBTQ public school curricula—become comfortable with their own bodies. Colorado’s law essentially sought to lock children into the path toward “transition”—a staggering Orwellian irony, since “transition” is itself just another form of “conversion.” This is precisely why LGBTQ activists shifted from using the phrase “gender transition” to “gender-affirming therapy”: to enable them to claim that there was not actually a “conversion” from one gender to another being perpetrated.
Thus, according to LGBTQ activists and their political allies, to oppose the attempt to convert someone from one gender to another through social transition, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex change surgeries is “conversion therapy.” In order to clear up any confusion that this inversion might cause, Colorado’s law specifically listed an exception to its “conversion therapy” ban: “Assistance to a person undergoing gender transition.” A child could be counseled into gender transition, but it was illegal to counsel a child out of gender transition.