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Critic compares ‘gender affirming’ therapy to lobotomies
Renee McGuinness (left), Vermont AG Charity Clark
By Guy Page
Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark has joined a coalition of 19 states and the District of Columbia in filing an amicus brief in support of Michigan’s ban on conversion therapy for minors, her office announced Tuesday June 3.
The legal brief, submitted this week to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, defends Michigan’s 2023 law prohibiting licensed health professionals from attempting to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The brief claims that conversion therapy, also known as sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts is associated with a heightened risk of mental health crises, including depression and suicide, particularly among LGBTQ+ youth.
Vermont has banned the practice since 2016, when a 2015 state law saying “a mental health care provider shall not use conversion therapy with a client younger than 18 years of age” took effect. Mental health professionals are forbidden, upon pain of loss of licensure and other disciplinary measures, to practice conversion therapy – regardless of whether either child or parents request it. Anyone seeking conversion therapy health care from a licensed professional must travel out of state.
This April, a State House seminar by SpeakVT and the Vermont Family Alliance to educate legislators on detransitioning was shut down by transgender hecklers. Legislative leaders refused to order the hecklers out, or criticize them afterwards.
Marie Tiemann, president of SpeakVT, said today “All parents should be extremely concerned about this action.”
“It appears that this is unconstitutional since parents are recognized as the primary caregivers; however Article 22 [added to the Vermont Constitution in 2022] has usurped parent rights,” Tiemann said.
“There is a statement in Article 22 referring to the state’s best interest of the child. That statement is up to interpretation by the state, and each case would be judged separately. Since the “best interest” is not clearly defined, the judgement would be based on the opinion of whoever is in charge,” Tiemann said.
“Our U.S. medical organizations, Planned Parenthood, Attorney General Charity Clark, and other Vermont elected officials continue to erode their credibility by insisting that ‘gender-affirming care’ is legitimate medical practice: it’s on par with lobotomies, quite frankly.”
– Renee McGuinness, Vermont Family Alliance
“Rules and Laws are already in place to protect children who are truly being abused. Charity Clark considers a non-affirming parent to be abusive, when in fact, she is the abuser of children by allowing pharmaceutical and surgical mutilation of growing children.
“How many more children need to be harmed before common sense returns to our society? I would direct all parents to read the writing by “Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT)” to protect their children and before they seek any psychological or medical treatment for their child.
Tiemann encouraged parents to contact SpeakVT at speakvermont@gmail.com.
Clark said the First Amendment gives no protection to conversion therapy practitioners.
“The First Amendment does not give licensed providers the right to practice therapies that fall far below the accepted standard of care,” the brief states. “States have long held the power to regulate professional conduct, especially in the interest of protecting vulnerable populations like children.”
Attorney General Clark emphasized the importance of this legal stance. “Conversion therapy is not just unscientific—it’s dangerous,” Clark claims.
The brief warns that overturning Michigan’s law could have broad implications, potentially undermining states’ rights to regulate other medical practices. It stresses that bans on conversion therapy align with decades of state-level regulation designed to prevent harm and uphold public trust in licensed professionals.
Major national medical and mental health organizations, including the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, and American Psychiatric Association, oppose conversion therapy. More than 25 states currently restrict or ban the practice.
Renee McGuinness, Vermont Family Alliance (VFA) Policy Analyst, disputes the contention of broad opposition to modern-day conversion therapy in the medical community.
While there have been some harmful therapies in the past in treating persons whose sexual attraction is for the same sex, U.S. medical organizations and state legislators have conflated “conversion therapy” to apply to persons who believe they were born in the wrong body,” McGuinness said. “The AMA, APA, APA continue to ignore the scientific research coming out of Europe – the Cass Final Report and UK’s HHS – that children should not be transitioned.
“Nor have they considered the group therapy work conducted by Dr. Az Hakeem [DETRANS: When transition is not the solution by Az Hakeem] Goodreads, in which most persons considering “transitioning” changed their minds. Our U.S. medical organizations, Planned Parenthood, Attorney General Charity Clark, and other Vermont elected officials continue to erode their credibility by insisting that “gender-affirming care” is legitimate medical practice: it’s on par with lobotomies, quite frankly.
Other states joining Vermont and Michigan in the legal filing include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin, along with the District of Columbia.
A copy of the amicus brief is available online.
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Categories: Society & Culture
Headline fixed:
VT AG backs states’ child-abuse on conversion therapy for minors
You can’t drive a car for money until you are 18, because you are not mature enough.
You can’t operate a ladder at major hardware chains until you are 18.
You have to be 16 in order to cook at McDonalds.
You have to be 16 in order to drive a car in the state.
You have to be 21 in order to drink.
You have to be 18 in order to join the military.
You have to be 18 in order to be legal to sign a contract.
You remain on a family’s health insurance until……26 years old!
But somehow at 11 or 12, or 3 years old you have the wisdom to make medical life changing decisions without parental consent and the state keeps information from the parent and will prosecute them for interfering? They have totally lied to our children and are confusing, sex with love, they are not the same. Lust and love are not the same.
The state has taken your child, literally. Children are not safe in Vermont. And they wonder why families aren’t moving to Vermont?
Montpelier, Here’s your sign.
Well said! Children shouldn’t even be taught about anything pertaining to gender until at least puberty! They can decide after they turn 18!
Isn’t Transgenderism the EPITOME of “conversion therapy”?
Exactly!!!
HA!! The truth right under our noses!!
Well there you have it, Tim’s right on here.
Though perhaps what Vermont schools undertake should be called “perversion therapy.” Charity Clark is on her own personal moral crusade in other states while Vermont burns. A shameful disgrace of an AG.
💯
Nobody can even define what “conversion therapy” is. Why? Because it doesn’t exist. There’s nowhere you can go to get a degree in conversion therapy. But walk through the hallways of the Burlington Schools and tell me what the messaging is teaching the children who look at it everyday. THAT’S the real conversion therapy.
“Attorney General Charity Clark … continue[s] to erode [her] credibility by insisting that ‘gender-affirming care’ is legitimate medical practice,” says Renee McGuinness of the Vermont Family Alliance. But Clark is joining the brief in support of banning it and is quoted here saying, “Conversion therapy is not just unscientific—it’s dangerous.” And it has been banned in Vermont since 2016, according to this article. Is McGuinness’s negativity and criticism misplaced? Is something missing from the story as reported here?
McGuinness’s negativity and criticism are backed by scientific data. Clark’s opinions are backed only by her bias’s.
When referencing something as final and life altering as the medicalization of ‘pediatric gender dysphoria’, ( not to be confused with adult gender dysphoria), opinions must be backed by rigid and thorough scientific testing. This type of data is far from conclusive concerning pediatric gender dysphoria, which is why at this point psychiatric or psychosocial therapy is recommended as at this time.
My opinions here stated are again like McGuinness based on scientific data and also the lack thereof.
I’ll be curious to see if the amicus brief includes any scientific research.
I encourage all the readers of this post to go through the HHS report that McGuinness has referenced. We are playing with fire and opinions have no place here.
I mean McGuinness’s criticism of Clark. Because they seem to agree here.
“Conversion Therapy” refers to counseling a minor in order to determine if they are genuinely certain that they want to transition.
«The brief claims that conversion therapy, also known as sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts, is associated with a heightened risk of mental health crises, including depression and suicide.» Again, the brief, which Clark supports, is defending state bans on conversion therapy for minors.
AG Clark, is just another festering sore in Vermonts legal system, she’s no leader, all she is, is just a DemocRATic puppet………………… pretty pathetic.
She keeps joining all these other feckless liberal states, but what has she done on her own for Vermoters ??……….. tYeah , that’s what I thought !!
This story gets more confusing every day. Maybe that is the agenda.
Chingachgook told me, “Don’t try to understand them; and don’t try to make them understand you. For they are a breed apart and make no sense.” – Hawkeye
Hey Charity, isn’t the grooming of otherwise-NORMAL, presumably future-heterosexual children to be other-than-normal sexually a form of conversion therapy?
Is this form of “conversion therapy” not practiced in the public schools currently by activist teachers who probably CHOSE the profession in order to have access to children? Do liberal activists take great joy in seeing the Catholic Church being held responsible for the acts of a few individual pervert priests who have treated children similarly, after having chosen their profession simply to advance their own predatory perversions? Accepting that there are a certain percentage of homosexuals in the population since the dawn of history, and accommodating them into the normal fabric of society is one thing, perhaps rightfully protected by civil rights law and marriage strictures. All the rest of this alphabet soup perversion has blossomed into a bleepshow of sick parades with bare-ass men in S&M attire tossing condoms to children and 75+ genders along with powerful hormonal drugs and surgeries being marketed to children who are legally too young to get a tattoo.
ENOUGH.
Thank you so much for all your hard work on this Renee. Charity needs to go, she is a danger to VT.
Am I the only one who sees the other side of this coin? It’s then illegal to provide “conversion care” whereby a girl seeks treatment to become a “boy”?