(JEWISH GROUP) 'Conversion therapy is having a moment' -- what will that mean for LGBTQ+ Jews?

The Supreme Court dove into the culture wars again this week by hearing arguments on conversion therapy — a controversial pseudoscientific practice that attempts to change LGBTQ+ patients’ sexuality to align with heterosexual desires. In Chiles v. Salazar, Kasey Chiles, an evangelical therapist in Colorado, is alleging that Colorado’s conversion therapy ban violates her 1st Amendment rights, leaving her unable to work with patients who want to live a life “consistent with their faith.”

Conversion therapy is not solely an evangelical Christian problem. In 2012, a group of plaintiffs in New Jersey successfully sued a group called Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, alleging that it had committed consumer fraud by selling services that it claimed could turn someone heterosexual. The organization, known as JONAH, promised religious Jews that they could change their sexual orientation via methods that included being forced to strip naked and beat pillows that represented their mothers.

When JONAH was forced to disband after losing in court in 2015, it reformed just 11 days later as a new organization called the Jewish Institute for Global Awareness. In 2019, a judge found this was a violation of the original court order and shut down JIGA as well. Yet conversion therapy in the Orthodox world persists to this day. One new organization, Jewish Family Forever, led by Dr. Koby Frances, claims that “modern ideologies are leading people away from their values,” and its website prominently states that they are “encouraging Torah traditional heterosexual marriage.”

Chaim Levin, one of the plaintiffs who sued JONAH, is now a first-year law student at Drexel University and has been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ Jews.

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