March 31, 2026 it is trans day of visibility. and i am grieving and furious. today the united states supreme court voted effing 8-1 that colorado's law banning conversion therapy for minors violates the first amendment rights of a therapist who promotes an abusive therapy for minors. the summary of the bill that went into law years ago includes this: "Conversion therapy" means efforts to change an individual's sexual orientation, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex." this law isn't just about protecting trans minors. the colorado law protects all 2SLGBTQI+ minors from abusive faux therapy. (this acronym stands for Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex, with the plus sign representing additional sexual and gender diverse identities. i also use QUILTBAG, which stands for queer, intersex, lesbian, trans, bi, asexual/aromantic, and gay, with the name itself referring to a bag used in quilts which holds and protects all the pieces during construction) you can read about conversion therapy here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy if you aren't familiar with conversion therapy, it originated in "the feminine boy project", which ivar lovaas was part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ole_Ivar_Lovaas#UCLA_Feminine_Boy_Project THREE of my friends, all under 21, were put thru anti-gay conversion therapy in the early 80s. all all three ☠️ within 10 years, two actively by their own hand due to the self-hatred they had been taught, and the third thru increasingly risky behaviours bc she didn't want to live with the same self-hatred. and you know what anti-gay "christians" said? better a dead child than a gay one. that it was god's will. (for what, their parents having them physically, psychologically, and emotionally abused for being how they were born??) so why am i posting this HERE? because ABA therapy was also developed by ivar lovass, using the same principles used in the feminine boy project: break down a minor's sense of self thru punishment and teaching them that who they are is so "wrong" that they hate themselves, and then try to create who you want on a blank slate. you can read lovaas' book about aba therapy here: https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/0/items/LovaasMeBook/Lovaas%20-Me%20Book.pdf (yeah yeah, aba practitioners say it's changed. meanwhile EX aba practitioners say "no, it still used aversives" and "we were taught to manipulate parents into letting us do what we "needed" by telling them their child would never "get better" without it". and aba therapists for a time were very active on twitter, mocking and verbally abusing autistic people. the international association was having the company who makes punitive shock devices at their conventions to extoll the virtues to their members of giving autistic people painful shocks as aversives. the judge rotenberg center STILL uses shock devices to punish autistic adults even for things like crying in fear that they would be shocked, tensing up, or trying to get way from painful electric shocks) Autisticat the furious
