Ann Rostow: Rocky Mountain High

By Ann Rostow –

Rocky Mountain High

This week the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether or not Colorado, and, by implication, another couple dozen states, have the right to outlaw conversion therapy—the type of intervention that aims to switch gay kids into heterosexuals. The process is widely discredited, but championed by groups like the antigay Alliance Defending Freedom and its client, evangelical Christian therapist Kaley Chiles. 

In Colorado and elsewhere, church leaders and other avuncular guides have every right to counsel GLBT kids, but mental health therapists may not use therapy to try to turn them straight. Conversion therapy, as you must know, leads to years of “depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient,” said the American Psychiatric Association years ago. Basically, it doesn’t work, it makes the kids miserable, and miserable kids are more likely to kill themselves, drink, take drugs, or undermine their near-term future in other ways. 

At issue, legally, is whether or not the Colorado law steps on the Free Speech rights of therapists, or whether the law merely restricts medical practice. You may recall from earlier this year that the Supreme Court has no problem with laws that restrict how medical practitioners can treat minors because the Court said Tennessee and other states can continue to ban treatment for transgender youth. No problem!

But would we be surprised if the Court strokes its chin and decides that, unlike Tennessee, this is a case where constitutional rights take precedence? If so, it’s likely that the Court would then ask Colorado to explain why its law survives “strict scrutiny,” a virtually impossible legal test that guarantees that our constitutional rights are not easily weakened. 

One hopeful sign is that National Center for Lesbian Rights Legal Director, Shannon Minter, thinks the Court may be impressed with the range of briefs in support of Colorado, which include conservative and Catholic voices. Also, since Kaley Chiles has never actually practiced conversion therapy, she may lack standing to bring this case in the first place. The Court could always use that as a so-called off ramp to avoid taking a stand.

As the Court’s new session continues, we’ll be determining whether Trump’s executive order mandating two sexes requires us all to pick an F or M for our passports. In January, Trump had mandated we all use our sex “at conception” on our travel documents, but the American Civil Liberties Union sued and got the order suspended while litigation proceeded through the First Circuit and into the Supreme Court.

We’ll also be watching the Court deliberate over when, whether, and how transgender girls can be kicked of the public school or college sports fields. And we’ll see if the justices decide to review the Kim Davis challenge to marriage equality, which I’m betting they will decline.

Gay Carcinogens 

Here’s a headline from The New York Post: “Plane forced to land after wacko wearing ‘15 masks’ screams that gay people were giving him cancer.” For some reason, I’m attracted to the various stories we see about nutcases on airplanes having fits over stale pretzels or armrests. (I particularly liked the one where JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, after getting hit in the head with a piece of luggage and having an argument with the unapologetic passenger, said with expletives that he’d had enough, grabbed a few beers, and slid down the escape slide onto the tarmac before departure.) 

In this case, a small Sun Country flight from Minneapolis to Newark included a passenger who started shouting about being chased by gangs of gay people. A witness told the Post that the lunatic “also screamed he was being ‘radiated’ and ‘cooked’ by gays, and that they were giving him cancer.” After each explosive comment, the man would play a game of Candy Crush, and at one point he announced that “Trump is here.”

When the raving passenger, who was wearing “at least” fifteen face masks, started talking about how the plane was going to crash, the crew had finally had enough and the plane made an emergency landing at O’Hare, where the MAGA madman was removed from the cabin by Chicago police.

Upon reflection, I’m not sure why I threw in this fraidy cat rando who was clearly off his meds. I gravitate towards MAGA people behaving badly, just as I cringe when some shooter has a transgender girlfriend or some lone wolf spent time on Grindr. GLBT compadres! Stay out of trouble, hear me?

That said, we are all capable of madness and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. We’re all capable of violence, and while I believe firmly that violence is more prevalent from the gun-toting, macho MAGA right, there’s not much to gain in arguing about which political side of the aisle is more destructive. It’s like a continuing domestic fight in a family that has become dysfunctional. Someone has to step out, step ahead, get the shopping and the cleaning done, and change the pattern. 

Life as a Male Prostitute in Haiti Sounds Great!

I just read on Fox News Digital that Louisiana Senator John Kennedy blamed the government shutdown on bizarre Democratic priorities: “The lawmaker listed out nearly $20 million in foreign aid funding that he alleged Democrats had their eyes on, including, $4.2 million for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people in the Western Balkans and Uganda, $3.6 million for pastry cooking classes and dance focus groups for male prostitutes in Haiti, $6 million dollars for media organizations for the Palestinians, and $3 million for circumcisions and vasectomies in Zambia.” But even Fox News digital pointed out that Kennedy was unable to produce any evidence or further information about these projects. 

Speaking on the Senate floor, Fox reports that he also “accused congressional Democrats of seeking hundreds of thousands for electric buses in Rwanda, transgender people in Nepal, a pride parade in Lesotho, and for social media and mentorship in Serbia.”

“We took all that out,” he boasted. Kennedy’s moronic statements are nothing new, but I can’t be bothered to look his history up right now. He seems to think that the name of a foreign country makes an expenditure look kooky, as in “electric buses in Rwanda” or vasectomy in Zambia.” Yet, by destroying USAID and canceling all sorts of lifesaving programs like PEPFAR (which will reportedly be transitioning out of existence in a few years), our country has eroded its soft power and increased suffering throughout the world for the price of a couple of Air Force jets. I don’t know that for sure, but I do know that we spend a ton on military stocks and keeping the Trump tax cuts in place while the cost of some of our lifesaving foreign ventures is comparatively small. 

I also know that Democrats are keeping the doors closed so that millions of Americans don’t see their Obamacare premiums double or triple, and others don’t lose other government health programs. I’m not familiar with the fun money for gay male prostitutes in Haiti, but speaking again of USAID and PEPFAR, Haiti was a beneficiary of both foreign aid services and male prostitutes were considered a marginal group in need of assistance, particularly PEPFAR’s help with AIDS prevention and relief. 

Lastly, as I tried to check for pastry classes for Haitian prostitutes paid for by the U.S. government, I found tons of other references either to Kennedy’s comment or to some other vague source. Everyone from golfer Phil Mickelson to Congresswoman Nancy Mace is making fun of the pastry classes that no one seems to be able locate in our budget.

Kash Patel Hits New Lows

Amid the blatant violations of the Constitution, like say killing people in international waters because they might be drug dealers (or might be fishermen!), denying birth right citizenship, or deporting refugees who are waiting legally for hearings, a seemingly small FBI case has caught the nation’s eyes because it’s simply so infuriating. 

During the Biden administration, in 2024, an FBI staffer working in L.A. had a small rainbow flag on his desk. The staffer, who subsequently became a probationary agent, had won an Attorney General’s Award in 2022. I guess that’s high recognition for investigative work.

Moving on, the agent relocated to Quantico, presumably to finish training. Like many GLBT federal staffers, he no longer flew rainbow flags—GLBT employees throughout the government were warned to be discrete as the Trump administration came into power. Somehow, FBI Director Kash Patel became aware that this agent or staffer had a little rainbow flag on his desk back in the day, and, taking advantage of the firing spree that Trump has instigated during the shutdown, he gave the guy the ax.

“After reviewing the facts and circumstances and considering your probationary status, I have determined that you exercised poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage in your work area during your previous assignment in the Los Angeles Field Office,” wrote Patel as the shutdown began. “You are being summarily dismissed from your position as a New Agent Trainee at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and removed from the federal service.” 

For all intents and purposes, this individual was fired for being gay, which not only is against the law, but it’s also against the law according to a 6–3 Supreme Court ruling written in 2020 by Neil Gorsuch. Commentators have every expectation that this guy will sue for wrongful termination. But the galling thing is that something like this can take place in spite of the fact that it’s blatantly against the law. Much like the murder of people on boats whom we don’t like, it’s the federal government performing criminal or illegal acts and letting the chips fall where they may, months or years down the road in some dusty courthouse where the facts of the matter have already started to fade towards history. They don’t care. And all we can do is to keep going to those dusty courthouses. 

I just asked Google how many officials went to prison after Watergate (which looks like a small government misstep compared to these guys). The AI summary said “close to 40,” including the Attorney General and Chief of Staff. I would hope some of this constitutional bloodbath will stick to some of these self-satisfied mandarins once we all emerge from the horrors of the Trump years.

Dark Times in The Sunshine State

I’ve been writing about those rainbow crosswalks in Orlando, which were established as memorials to the Pulse nightclub shooting. Recently, under Governor’s orders, the crosswalks were paved over because they were “political” or some such nonsense. Meanwhile, individuals and small business owners with private property rights painted the rainbow colors on their driveways in protest.

I thought this phenomenon was an Orlando thing, but I guess it’s statewide. Apparently, all street art was ordered removed a couple of months ago, and recently, the city of Miami lost an appeal, and its iconic Ocean Avenue brick rainbow crossroad was dug up. Miami Beach Commissioner Alex Fernandez said the paving stones will be saved and repurposed.

The governor, of course, is creepy Ron DeSantis, who will have to leave office under term limits in 2027. For a time, he and his ambitious, domineering wife, were considering a campaign to put the wife in the governor’s seat, but I think they’ve both lost a great deal of momentum ever since DeSantis tried and failed miserably to win the 2024 presidential primary, while wife Casey appeared to have funneled ten million in state money to some political slush fund.

Explaining the attack on rainbows, DeSantis said: “I think the street art got out of hand. I think it’s much better that we use crosswalks and streets for their intended purpose.” Say what? Rainbow crosswalks are “out of hand” and defeat the intended purpose of showing where to cross the street?

According to Axis, one DeSantis insider said that there “was a time when every Republican in the nation wanted to have a beer with Ron DeSantis. The problem is that the governor didn’t act like he wanted to have a beer with them, and it showed.” But while it’s nice to watch the DeSantis couple spiral into irrelevance, I don’t have much confidence in whomever Floridians might pick to succeed him.

arostow@aol.com