Therapy is just a word, Colorado

Others call it persuasion, or speaking, or preaching, or harm. Plus: To the moon!

Apr 02, 2026

Anyone who’s been hurt by someone’s words knows that for humans, words have great power. And by “anyone” I think I mean everyone, because I don’t know any people who have not been offended, hurt, wounded, or even permanently affected by things people say. The closer the person saying the words, emotionally or mentally-speaking, the more those words can wound. I could write a long list of words I regret saying, some of which I’m sure hurt others, and I could write a similar list of things said to me that didn’t feel particularly good hearing.

The word “therapy” means “treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder.” Another definition is “the treatment of mental conditions by verbal communication and interaction.” So, talking to someone can be therapy. That’s really kind of the basis of psychological treatment (versus psychiatric treatment, which frequently involves drugs). You talk things out, listen to words, and feel better.

Sometimes words that hurt are also therapy. Telling someone deep in a condition like an eating disorder that they are pursuing an unhealthy lifestyle undoubtedly doesn’t feel good to the person hearing it. Or telling a functional alcoholic that everyone knows about their “hidden” drinking probably isn’t going to make that person endeared to whoever breaks the news. But it’s therapy to tell someone a truth about themselves in order that they might address a problem that negatively affects their lives.

Colorado passed a law in 2019 that bans “any practice of treatment” that tries to change a minor’s “gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that this law violates the First Amendment by unfairly limiting free speech, thereby striking it down. It’s a complicated issue.

If a teen has a real internal conflict, for example, they truly believe in Christianity and that the Bible is truth, but also feel physically attracted by the same sex, that teen would see themselves as having a disorder. Not the kind of mental disorder a doctor might find in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, but a mental disorder of the cognitive dissonance kind. If the teen went to their youth pastor and confessed their attraction, and the pastor then prayed with the teen and offered Biblical advice to help them shed their attraction, in Colorado, before the ruling, this would be a crime.

Then again, a teen who confessed to their parents that they are gay, and the parents, Christians, sent the teen to the youth pastor for counseling (therapy), would also be guilty of a crime. In one case, it’s the teen seeking therapy, and in the other, it’s the parents seeking it for the teen. I think in the latter case, the teen, if they are convinced of the immutability of their sexual orientation, and that is paramount over what the Bible teaches, is not going to be swayed by the therapy. It is simply going to sound harmful in their ears, and cement them further into the lifestyle they’ve chosen.

On the other hand, some schools, teachers, and organizations like GLAAD lean toward persuading teens (or exist for that purpose) that sexual orientation is a set-in-stone characteristic like hair color, hairy legs, or how tall they are. There is sometimes a strong message that trying to change sexual orientation is taboo and falls into the category of brainwashing.

Nobody is going to get to the definitive answer for such a metaphysical quandary. There is no gene that has been identified as the “gay gene.” Many studies have been done, and some conclude that whether someone is straight or gay is totally dependent on how they were raised or their personal experience. Kids who were abused by same-sex trusted adults seem to end up gay more often than those who weren’t. But abuse is not the cause of homosexuality or lesbianism. And some teens go through phases of experimentation and figuring things out, later to find that they are not at all what they thought they were just a few years earlier.

It’s not really an exact science, or in fact a science at all.

Theologically, in an orthodox understanding of Christianity, and Judaism for that matter, the Bible is pretty clear that homosexual practice is sin. For a Christian, sin is to be ruthlessly removed. Telling someone this is part of Christian practice. In a group, it’s called preaching. One on one, it’s called counseling. For the Christian, a better life is one without sin, therefore removing homosexual urges would be considered therapy, and having homosexual urges would be considered a disorder, theologically speaking. Banning religious speech on the basis of what lawmakers consider to be a disorder or not is clearly unconstitutional, so I believe the Supreme Court ruled correctly.

This doesn’t mean in all cases, religious freedom trumps the state’s interest. For example, Sharia-following Muslims would throw homosexuals off buildings. It’s unconstitutional to ban the belief that Sharia law prohibits homosexuality, but it’s not unconstitutional to make throwing people off buildings a crime. Neither would I call murdering someone “therapy.”

The Colorado law tried to skirt the religious issue by including a religious exemption for “those engaged in in the practice of religious ministry.” But a counselor who is a Christian would have been liable for a $5,000 fine and possible suspension of their license for telling someone a Biblical truth in the interests of therapy. This was the basis of the original challenge to the law by Kaley Chiles, a Christian counselor who claimed it prevented her from counseling young patients who seek a life “consistent with their faith.”

Therapy is just a word. It is supposed to help people feel better about themselves, or offer a path out of lifestyles and disorders to a more fruitful and meaningful life for the person receiving therapy. It is not supposed to change people to their foundations. The real power of the Gospel, for the believer, is that it can change people to their foundations. This is not done by therapy, or words, or counseling. It’s an internal work of the Spirit of God, a regeneration, the act of being “born again,” or as the Bible says, becoming a new creation in Christ.

A law cannot deny the power of God, which operates on its own without outside justification. So if a homosexual person experiences a rebirth and is no longer attracted to the same sex, or if person living as transgender experiences a change and no longer identifies as transgender, what business is it of the state that a preacher, or counselor, or a friend, was the impetus for their belief?

Some people are offended that anyone would choose a life of following Biblical truth, or that they would claim God changed them. I’ve seen cases online where a transgender person accepted Christ, and totally changed their identity back to their birth sex and gender. They changed their look, their hair, the way they dressed, and those who were formerly friends of that person rejected them. They abandoned the new person because they believed the old person was the authentic version. Just like many who don’t believe in the power of God would condemn Christians for not accepting transgender or gay people as authentic, who are these others who get to decide on their own how a friend should live?

The Bible says that being a new creation will bring some trouble, and even persecution. Even harmful words. If, to the Christian, words affirming the Bible and the ability of believers to live without sin, is therapy, then what is it when people opposed to Biblical beliefs condemn when someone chooses to live Biblically? It’s not therapy. That is, unless one believes that living Biblically itself is a disorder.

There’s a line between the pie chart where therapy, harm, and brainwashing all reside. All that changes is how people label the slices.

The government has no interest in defining how that looks to anyone, whether it’s a teen, or an adult, or parents seeking to raise their kids in a particular worldview. As long as adults keep their hands to themselves, and don’t engage in sexual abuse, mental abuse, emotional abuse, or physical abuse, the First Amendment protects the rights of people to believe what they want, and consider whatever they think is a disorder, and whatever therapy is necessary to correct it.

If Christians have to live with GLAAD, then the LGBTQ community has to live with people who believe the life-changing power of Christ needs no other permission to remake individuals from the inside out.

Colorado was wrong and the Supreme Court did the right thing.

Congratulations, Artemis II! Space flight is hard. NASA has a bad habit of swinging between complete paralysis by analysis in risk avoidance, and buckaroo launch-itis groupthink. I am very happy that NASA seems to have struck the balance between these poles in the Artemis II launch. The decision to push ahead with the launch with no “wet rehearsal” for this attempt was the right thing, apparently. The program managers believed that every fueling/refueling caused more risk for problems than proving things are trouble-free by doing the test, and therefore they rammed the launch through, checked their numbers, and with only the slightest of countdown holds, launched SLS into orbit flawlessly.

Now to the moon.

The only hangup I have is the fact that NASA and ULA built a system so complex and delicate that the more it’s used, the less reliable it becomes. In engineering, that’s not a good basis for a failure mode. It’s probably a good thing that not one part of the SLS stack is reusable in this case. However, it’s really expensive to keep building new rocket parts, engines, SRBs and capsules for every launch. This is not the way to get to a permanent moon base. It’s the way of Apollo, which led to cancellation of the last moon program.

SpaceX has a much more viable vision for reusability. But SpaceX is supposed to provide the lunar lander, based on the Starship. To get there, the Starship has to launch, achieve orbit, conduct ship-to-ship refueling in orbit, put itself into a translunar injection, assume an orbit around the moon, dock with the Orion spacecraft launched by the SLS, land on the moon, and use an elevator to bring astronauts and equipment to the surface. Not one of those things has been demonstrated by SpaceX.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacson has a vision for Artemis. But the timeline might as well be fantasy if the agency believes Elon Musk’s SpaceX can catch up. Of course, Musk has been known to do impossible things. It’s a race against the clock and political will, and the Chinese.

For now, however, congratulations to Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. They will become the fastest, furthest humans ever to leave terra firma. That in itself is an accomplishment worth celebrating. Godspeed, Artemis II.

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