Every clinical organization I follow on social media issued a statement expressing its “disappointment” the day after the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Colorado’s ban on the unethical and clinically unfounded practice of “conversion therapy.” 

The court cited First Amendment concerns in its ruling. The plaintiff argued, as a “person of faith,” she has a right to speak and act freely in the clinical space, especially with clients who want to change their sexual orientation or gender identity on faith-based grounds.

I have practiced as a licensed professional clinical counselor in Ohio for 21 years. I am a person of faith and an interfaith seminarian.

I am beyond disappointed. I am experiencing a deep sense of grief. The emotional states of anger, depression, denial, bargaining, acceptance and a host of other feelings are dancing around in my heart.

What I’ve Lost

What have I lost? I’ve lost what little faith I had in members of my profession to automatically do the right thing by people who identify as any letter in the rainbow of sexual and gender diversity.

I’ve lost hope that people who train for a license to practice therapy will put the ethics of the profession that licenses them over their particular interpretation of a faith tradition they practice—in most cases, Christianity.

I’ve lost the relative sense of safety I once experienced in my vocation as a bisexual woman, recognizing, with the rise of Trumpism, just how much ugliness exists toward queerness and diversity.

I am so sad and angry that sometimes I shut myself down to prevent my emotions from turning into a ball of rage.

I also admit I am not surprised by the decision, given the makeup of the current court. I am shocked, however, that two more progressive justices I admire, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, sided with the conservative majority on First Amendment grounds. Claiming the First Amendment covers mental health workers opens a dangerous precedent for licensed therapists to share and espouse harmful ideas, not just conversion therapy principles, with clients.

I want my fellow therapists to have a high degree of intellectual freedom and the right to vary in how we practice. But I don’t want what therapists share to violate the basic codes of ethics and decency we are all expected to follow.

Sad, But Unsurprised

I am not surprised that conservative Christians have taken the fight this far. 

I grew up in a form of conservative evangelical Christianity that espoused Christian nationalism. So nothing happening in “the name of Jesus” in Donald Trump’s America surprises me. People in certain expressions of faith have been fighting all along for the hell in which we, as proud queer and trans people, now find ourselves.

By my early 20s, I ended up worshipping in a more conservative style of Catholicism. I worked for the Catholic Church when I got sober and entered recovery. Soon after, I obtained my master’s degree from Franciscan University of Steubenville, one of the most prestigious conservative institutions in the United States.

The myth of Christian persecution was strongly emphasized in both traditions in which I was raised. I was taught to believe that secular society was coming to destroy Christian values and that the LGBTQ+ “agenda” was the enemy. For a while, largely as a survival response and to deny my own queerness, I bought into the lie.

That experience at Franciscan, especially the anti-gay rhetoric I absorbed after coming out to myself as bisexual, accelerated my deconstruction process. During one lecture, where we debated whether a client in a nationally recognized clinical demonstration tape was “really gay,” I became very uncomfortable. They were “debating” people like me and many of the people I loved, even though I was still traditionally devout.

That moment planted the seeds of my questioning about how Christian this educational approach to counseling and therapy could really be. The God and Jesus I had met at the bottom of the bottle emanated pure love and acceptance.

Finding God Outside the Box

My first year as a licensed therapist in Ohio changed me forever. The seeds planted during my graduate training blossomed into a full experience of deconstruction and reconstruction through work with clients in a community-based, secular setting.

My heart, not to mention the counseling ethics I agreed to follow, prompted me to meet clients without an agenda. When they arrived with unplanned pregnancies or persecution from religious family members because of their sexuality or gender expression, I met them with unconditional positive regard.

I knew Christian conservatives would want me to steer clients toward their interpretation of biblical righteousness without being too direct. I eventually recognized the horror of that strategy, which is not psychotherapy. It is missions.

Psychotherapy is designed to heal. Missions has an agenda to convert. Employing a missions strategy in a therapeutic setting is deceitful.

When my eyes finally opened to that deceit, there was no going back. I regretted anything I said in graduate school about religious people having a “right” to reverse their same-sex attractions with professional help.

Working in the field helped me see how much my earlier forms of devotion were rooted in survival and in defending against truly accepting myself. Once I learned to accept myself and my sexuality in its beautiful uniqueness, the mental health suffering that had plagued me for much of my life began to subside.

I studied counseling with a warped sense that therapy would be an extension of conservative ministry. Practicing it, however, confronted me with my initial motives.

The most meaningful fruit of the deconstruction and reconstruction process was that I connected more deeply and genuinely with the God of my understanding. I didn’t walk away from faith—though I don’t blame those who do after being harmed by hateful interpretations of Christianity.

I studied theology and hermeneutics. I came to recognize that faithful and thoughtful people approach scripture differently, engaging the divine with greater inclusion and openness to many paths. I have been transformed by the realization that people do not approach scripture or religion as it is; they approach it as they are.

The Miracle of Christ

I identify as a multireligious person of faith who still keeps a foot in the Christian tradition. I maintain a relationship, albeit a uniquely transparent one, with Christ.

I regard Christ’s incarnation into human form as a miracle. My life has taught me that God is too big to fit into any one religion and we diminish God when we believe otherwise. 

God can show up however God chooses—in scripture, in nature or in the myriad ways humanity shows up in the world. So it angers me when people of faith try to confine God and Jesus to that box. It enrages me that people of faith would target and persecute queer and trans people, even if they believe they are acting “in love.”

My greatest source of anger and sadness has been realizing how many of my fellow therapists are shaped by the same kind of conservative Christian values reflected in the court’s ruling. Over the past decade, I have wept as therapists I once connected with through trauma- and dissociation-informed care revealed themselves as ardent Trump supporters.

I cannot reconcile the two, no matter how hard I have tried. I have been attacked on social media, in right-wing media and reported to a national continuing education accreditation board for speaking out against the Trump regime through a cultic studies lens.

Perhaps my heartache is deeper because, had I kept my eyes and heart closed, I might have been one of these therapists, believing I was doing God’s work while harming people. My heart also aches because, as both a counselor and an interfaith chaplain, I know I cannot approach people of different faith expressions with an agenda.

The God of my understanding calls me to love people as they are. And in 2026 America, it is hard to know what to do. So confusion joins the mix of emotions in this state of grief.

It is difficult to make sense of where the God of my understanding exists in these struggles. Perhaps today it is enough to be grateful that I found another way to connect with that divine love.