I’ve never forgotten the feeling of my heart pounding through my chest as I worked up the courage to come out as LGBTQ to my Army veteran father.
As an attorney, I had spent years taking on powerful interests — fighting to protect people living with HIV and AIDS across the Deep South and standing up to those trying to roll back LGBTQ+ rights. But coming out was different. For millions of LGBTQ+ people, it comes with a terrifying question: will the people you love still be there when you tell them who you are?
I was lucky. My family supported me.
Too many LGBTQ+ kids aren’t. Some are met with rejection. Others are subjected to so-called “conversion therapy” — a practice designed to shame them into changing who they are.
And instead of protecting those children, the United States Supreme Court has now put them in greater danger.
In overturning Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors, the court didn’t just get it wrong morally — it created a troubling legal double standard that applies only to the LGBTQ+ community. Separate, and unequal.
For over a century, the law has been clear: States are legally allowed to intervene when providers are doing harm to their patients.
We accept this everywhere else. A doctor cannot tell an anorexic patient to stop eating. A psychiatrist cannot advise a severely depressed patient to end their life. In each of these situations, the state can step in to suspend or remove a practitioner’s license — because professional licenses come with a duty to protect the public.
No one claims that doctors or lawyers have a First Amendment right to harm the people they serve.
But here, the Supreme Court said that LGBTQ+ people can be treated this way.
By framing conversion therapy as “speech,” the court elevated a therapist’s personal views over a patient’s right to safe, evidence-based care — even when that “care” has been widely condemned as harmful by every major medical association in the country.
Let’s be clear about what that means.
Conversion therapy isn’t just ineffective — it’s dangerous. It is linked to increased depression, anxiety and suicide among LGBTQ+ youth. Young people subjected to it are significantly more likely to attempt suicide.
That’s why nearly 30 states, including California, banned the practice for minors in the first place.
But now, the Supreme Court has opened the door to unravel those protections — and sent a chilling message: the rules designed to protect patients from harm don’t apply equally to everyone.
The consequences will be felt by young people sitting in therapy rooms, trusting adults who are supposed to help them — not harm them.
And this decision doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Since the start of this year alone, lawmakers have introduced hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills — targeting health care, censoring classrooms, banning books and even forcing teachers to out students to their parents, regardless of the risk.
I’ve seen the impact firsthand: young people carrying fear and pain, parents fighting desperately to protect their kids, families pushed to the brink by policies that treat their children as political targets.
I’ve spent my life fighting back.
In Mississippi, I founded a program providing free legal representation to people facing discrimination in housing, employment and health care. When extremists tried to strip LGBTQ+ books from libraries here in San Diego County, we organized, raised funds and put those stories back on the shelves where they belonged.
Because every American deserves dignity, safety and the freedom to live their life openly — to love who they love, to be who they are, without fear.
I’m proud to be LGBTQ+. I’m proud of the life I’ve built and the family I’m creating.
And I refuse to stand by while a dangerous double standard puts the next generation at risk.
We cannot allow the law to say that some patients are less worthy of protection than others. We cannot allow “free speech” to be twisted into a license to harm.
I will fight in Congress to pass the Equality Act, ensuring clear, nationwide protections against discrimination in employment, housing, education and public life.
Our kids deserve better. And I will never stop fighting to protect them.
Marni von Wilpert is a San Diego City Councilwoman running to represent California’s 48th congressional district in the House of Representatives.
