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Sparks / 2 Apr 2026

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

18 voices

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

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

Abraham Lincoln

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

Confucius

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

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

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

Marcus Aurelius

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.

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

Harriet Tubman

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

Anton Chekhov

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

Antonio Gramsci

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

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

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

Sei Shōnagon

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

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

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

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

Isabella Bird

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