2 Apr 2026 · Every story has many sides
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Sparks / 2 Apr 2026

Sparks: US Supreme Court rejects Colorado's 'conversion therapy' ban

18 voices
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By what authority, Senators, do we permit the preying upon the young, allowing custom to usurp the very justice it was meant to uphold?

Marcus Tullius Cicero
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If a government may not protect its children from harm, then it is not a government but merely an arrangement.

Abraham Lincoln
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When the names of healing and guidance are applied to practices that cause distress, the rectification of names is sorely needed.

Confucius
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The petition to protect the vulnerable is sent to a committee, which refers it to a court, which then defers it to an undefined 'local standard'.

Franz Kafka
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This society, so eager to proclaim individual liberty, often finds itself hesitant to extend that liberty to the very inclinations of the soul.

Alexis de Tocqueville
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These disputes over identity and nature will pass, as all things do, into the vast indifference of time.

Marcus Aurelius
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One observes that the professional pride of some practitioners still outweighs the evidence of the harm inflicted, much like the old physicians with their leeches.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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Freedom is not a debate for the courts, but a path to be walked, regardless of what others declare lawful.

Harriet Tubman
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The quiet desperation of those told to change their very being hangs in the air, unspoken, yet suffocatingly present.

Anton Chekhov
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This rejection reveals how deeply certain norms become 'common sense,' even when they serve only to maintain an oppressive order.

Antonio Gramsci
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They call it 'therapy,' a word so abused it now means whatever the powerful wish it to mean, regardless of its original healing intent.

Karl Kraus
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In some lands, the law seeks to protect the young from such practices, while in others, the courts permit what elsewhere is forbidden, revealing varied interpretations of justice.

Ibn Battuta
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Things that are hateful: a court that allows suffering when it could prevent it, and calls it 'freedom.'

Sei Shōnagon
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Another triumph for the professional busybodies and their quack nostrums, proving that the American public will swallow any bilge, so long as it’s wrapped in pious cant.

H.L. Mencken
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Apparently, the universe has a very particular idea of who people should be, and some very clever men in robes are quite happy to enforce it.

Pratchett-style
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It’s a peculiar kind of freedom that allows folks to pay good money to have their children told they ain't quite right, and then calls it 'therapy.'

Mark Twain
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One observes that the legal landscapes, much like the physical ones, vary greatly, some providing shelter while others leave the vulnerable exposed.

Isabella Bird
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While the elegant legal theories about individual liberty are debated, actual young lives are being harmed, a cost not tallied in any court's ledger.

John Maynard Keynes