Colorado law, enacted as HB19-1129, the Anti-conversion Therapy Act, is forcing mental health professionals to abandon their health care responsibilities to their patients if those patients are minors “undergoing gender transition.” The responsibility we psychotherapists are forced to avoid is asking our young clients, “what’s going on here, when and how did these thoughts start?”  Also, we cannot say, “let’s consider the pros and cons of your desire to change sexual characteristics of your body.”

It is rather intuitive that binders, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and body-part removal surgeries reduce the health of young people. Nonetheless, the mental health professionals have quietly rolled over to the legislated demand therapists must support such gender transition desires via showing “assistance to a person undergoing gender transition.” A danger to therapists is such questions as suggested above could be construed by the adolescent client as “attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” Then the young client could complain to the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA). This would likely launch an investigation of the therapist. This, in turn, would result in a huge financial and psychological drain on the therapist, when the therapist is simply asking his/her client to consider the wide range of ramifications of gender change efforts.

So, what has been happening as a result of HB19-1129? Well, therapists, wanting to avoid a DORA complaint, either are simplistic supporters of gender affirming treatment or do not see young clients presenting with gender dysphoria. Fear of being cancelled leads to therapists self-cancelling by not participating in providing fully exploratory mental health services. This self-cancelling includes a nearly total lack of therapists speaking out about the professional bind they are in.

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Now that this sexual ideology has succeeded in shutting up the mental health professions in Colorado for a few years, similarly oriented political activists are attempting to extend this cessation of free speech with HB25-1312, which attempts to stop parents from having questioning conversations in their own home.

Imagine having your child come home from school one day and say, “I want a binder and puberty blockers, and if you don’t give them to me, I’ll have social services remove me from this house. Oh, and the state or insurance will pay for it.”

By the way, what is gender affirming treatment all about? According to the textbook on The Gender Affirming Model by Keo-Meier and Ehrenrsaft, it is “about helping our children discover and fortify their true gender selves.” As the book repeats, one’s gender is one’s gender identity or self. What the book fails to explain is that identity is subject to change over time. The research on gender dysphoria makes this point as 61% to 98% of boys and 50% to 88% of girls desist from wanting to change genders by adulthood.

Though it is only humane to be fully accepting of all transgenders, it is also humane to see that for an individual to go through the stages of change involved in transgendering, most likely there will be many bouts of pain and uncertainty associated with making that journey. It is hard to imagine anyone hormonally or surgically changing their body without doubt. Nonetheless, the Colorado legislature has passed a law (and wants to pass more laws) forcing mental health professionals to do nothing with their clients but say, “Go for it, have the doctors cut off any part of your body that causes you discomfort.” The professionals are not to ask “Why?”

Greig Veeder has been a mental health professional since 1980 and started the Teaching Humane Existence Treatment Program in 1983 for adult male sex offenders. He served as the mental health professional on the Colorado Sex Offender Management Board for its first seven years beginning in 1992. Veeder retired from sex offender treatment in 2014 and consults with owners of privately held firms regarding key relationships, plus he has a private psychotherapy practice.