David Schwartz, an Orthodox Jew and a professional therapist from Brooklyn, with 40 years’ experience, who claims he has helped men overcome their gay inclination, is suing New York City over its ban on gay conversion therapy, arguing the ban violates his religious freedom as well as his freedom of speech.
Conversion therapy is the practice of trying to change an individual’s sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual using psychological or spiritual interventions. To date there has been scant reliable evidence that sexual orientation can, in fact, be changed, and medical authorities have warned that conversion therapy practices are potentially harmful. But proponents of the practice have provided anecdotal reports of people who claim success (full or partial) in helping gay individuals become heterosexual.
In February 2016, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo banned public and private health care insurers in his state from covering conversion therapy, and prohibited mental health facilities from treating minors using conversion therapy.
In December, 2017, the New York City Council passed legislation banning practitioners from charging individuals for conversion therapy. Individuals who transgress the new law are open to fines of $1,000 for the first violation, $5,000 for the second, and $10,000 for each subsequent violation.
On January 23, Dr Schwartz sued the city in federal court, complaining the law constitutes a “direct violation of freedom of speech and of free exercise of religion,” because it prevents him from attempting to cure his patients of homosexuality.
The legal challenge was brought by Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-gay group, whose attorney, Roger Brooks, argued (source: Pink News) that “The city council’s regulation is unprecedented and threatens to stand between Dr. Schwartz’s patients and the lives they choose to pursue,” and that “Dr. Schwartz has a right to use his professional skills to assist patients to live in accordance with their shared religious faith, including the religious mandates of the Torah.”
“By purporting to prohibit Dr. Schwartz from providing counseling to his fellow Jews that is guided by and consistent with his religious convictions concerning human nature and the possibility of change […] the Counseling Censorship Law violates his right to freely exercise his religion guaranteed by the First Amendment,” Brooks said, and added, “It is difficult to imagine a more direct violation of freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment than New York City’s attempt to regulate the private sessions between an adult and his counselor.
Dr Schwartz’s lawsuit also stresses that the plaintiff “fears that he may be the target of an enforcement action under the newly enacted Counseling Censorship Law,” and that “this knowledge in turn inevitably chills what should be a free and unfettered confidential conversation between psychotherapist and patient concerning deeply personal feelings and decisions, where candor is crucial.”
On June 25, 2015, a New Jersey jury found the Jewish conversion therapy organization JONAH guilty of consumer fraud in the case Ferguson v JONAH for promising to be able to change its clients’ sexual urges and determined its commercial practices to be unconscionable.
