Progressive activists and Democratic lawmakers who loudly defend “gender-affirming care” as a sacred doctor-patient decision insist the government must stay out of the exam room regarding puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minors. Yet the same voices cheer state bans on so-called “conversion therapy” that criminalize licensed therapists for simply offering talk therapy to help gender-dysphoric children explore their feelings, question sudden-onset confusion, or work through underlying mental health issues.
Nowhere is the double standard more glaring than in Wisconsin, where Tony Evers is openly defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 8-1 ruling in Chiles v. Salazar and refusing to repeal an administrative rule that brands client-requested talk therapy as “unprofessional conduct.”
Call it what it is: a glaring double standard that puts ideology ahead of child safety and scientific evidence. While the left frames medical transition as compassionate healthcare, they treat neutral psychotherapy, long the standard for addressing dysphoria, as dangerous “conversion” that must be outlawed.
The contradiction has grown sharper as evidence mounts against the rush to medically alter minors. The landmark Cass Review in Britain found the evidence for puberty blockers and hormones in adolescents “remarkably weak.” Several European nations, including Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the United Kingdom, have sharply restricted or banned such interventions for minors outside strict clinical trials.
In the United States, more than two dozen Republican-led states have enacted protections for minors, with the U.S. Supreme Court upholding Tennessee’s law in the 2025 Skrmetti decision. Yet in blue states, laws and rules labeled “conversion therapy” bans remain in force and are expanding, chilling therapists from offering the very exploratory care the Supreme Court affirms.
In Wisconsin, the rule at issue is an administrative code and defines “unprofessional conduct” as any counseling practice that seeks to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including talk-only therapy requested by the client or family. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), Wisconsin Family Action, and La Crosse Christian counselor Joy Buchman formally asked Evers to halt enforcement after the Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s nearly identical ban as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment.
Evers refused. In a letter to Wisconsin Family Council President Daniel Degner, the governor defended the regulation as necessary to protect minors from “harmful conversion therapy practices” and made no mention of repealing the rule or notifying licensees. Degner called the response “unhinged,” accusing Evers of “doubling down on his unconstitutional discriminatory order” to ban counselors from affirming biological realities.
Here at the Heartland Post, Editor in Chief Dan O’Donnell blasted Evers’ defiance in a video segment titled calling the governor’s letter poorly reasoned and accusing liberals of a ‘ Gay Panic ‘ That Imagines Right-Wing Therapists’ Lobotomizing ‘ or “electrocuting’ children. In reality, the banned “conversion therapy” is simply “professional therapists talking to confused children about their feelings and making sure that their belief that they’re the wrong gender isn’t something they’re going to grow out of. That’s it. It’s talking to kids … instead of just telling them that they’re trans and sending them off for puberty blockers and surgery.”
Evers’ statement means that therapists risk losing their licenses if they do anything other than immediately affirm a child’s self-identified gender. Exploratory talk therapy, helping a minor unpack social media influence, peer pressure, family dynamics, or conditions, is rebranded as “harmful conversion.” Meanwhile, the same politicians who invoke “parental rights” when convenient demand that schools hide a child’s gender confusion from parents while fast-tracking social transition and medical referrals.
This isn’t medical freedom; it’s viewpoint discrimination dressed up as child protection. If the left truly believed in keeping government out of the doctor’s office, they would allow parents and minors access to the full range of mental health options, including watchful waiting and therapy aimed at resolving dysphoria rather than chemically or surgically altering a healthy body.
Data from whistleblowers at pediatric gender clinics and long-term studies paint a troubling picture. Many “trans-identified” teens are girls caught in a wave of rapid-onset gender dysphoria fueled by social contagion. Detransition rates are rising as young adults confront regret over lost fertility and irreversible changes. European regulators moved to protect kids; the American left, including Evers in Wisconsin, doubled down on harmful ‘gender affirming’ surgeries and medication.
The message from Republican governors and legislatures has been consistent: children are to be protected, not to be experimented on. Children aren’t designer dogs for moms to parade around in handbags over weekday brunch mimosas. However, Evers sees children as just that and demands that they affirm the ideology or face the consequences. As more families and clinicians speak out, the disconnect grows harder to ignore: the same crowd demanding “hands off our doctors” for radical interventions is perfectly comfortable inserting the government between a child and a therapist who dares to ask hard questions before signing off on lifelong medicalization.
