Colorado Politics reported that a federal judge has blocked Colorado from enforcing its counseling restriction against Colorado Springs counselor Kaley Chiles while her case proceeds, after both sides agreed the state would not pursue professional discipline for now. That is narrow. It is not the whole war being won. It is a pause button, and a telling one.
The actual stipulated injunction says Colorado may not enforce the law against Chiles’ “talk-only licensed professional counseling and addiction counseling” while the case is pending. It also says the state cannot require her to respond to licensing complaints alleging that this talk-only counseling violates the challenged statute.
So no, this is not a moment for a cheap culture-war touchdown dance in the end zone. Spiking the football over a case involving children, sexuality, family pain, and counseling would be tacky, which of course means somebody online is probably already doing it with a flag cape and bad grammar.
Christians should care because this case touches several things at once: children, parental judgment, conscience, professional speech, state power, and the assumptions Colorado’s governing class wants every licensed professional to repeat.
Children are not experiments. Parents are not obstacles. And licensed counselors should not have to pledge allegiance to the state’s preferred anthropology as a condition of keeping their livelihood.
At the same time, Christians should not talk as if suffering kids are abstractions in a policy memo. Many young people are confused, hurting, anxious, and afraid. They need truth and mercy, not slogans. They need adults who love them enough to listen carefully and tell the truth gently.
Ephesians 4:15 calls Christians to speak “the truth in love.” That matters here. Truth without love becomes cruelty. Love without truth becomes state-sponsored confusion with a clipboard.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Chiles v. Salazar was also narrower than some people will admit. The Court held that Colorado’s law, as applied to Chiles’ talk therapy, regulated speech based on viewpoint and required more rigorous First Amendment scrutiny. The Court did not strike down every possible regulation in this area, and Colorado Politics noted that the justices did not cast doubt on the law’s application to non-speech forms of conversion therapy.
That distinction matters. Scripture does not hand us a licensing-board statute. It gives us deeper categories: human dignity, truth, family, stewardship, authority, and the danger of rulers exceeding their lane.
Genesis 1:27 says God created human beings in His own image. That means every child who walks into a counseling office has dignity before the state ever writes a definition. It also means the state does not get to redefine the human person and then punish professionals who refuse to nod along.
Civil government has a real role. It may punish abuse, fraud, coercion, and actual harm. It may regulate professional standards in lawful and properly limited ways. Christians are not anarchists with Bible covers.
But government has a lane.
When the state begins policing what may be said in a counseling room, especially around sexuality, conscience, faith, and family, Christians should pay attention. Public policy disciples the public. It teaches people what is normal, what is forbidden, what is shameful, and what must be repeated to keep a license. True governance reflects what Paul wrote about in Romans 13.
The progressive assumption underneath these laws is the real issue. Disagreement with modern sexual ideology is increasingly treated as harm by definition. It is not. Once that assumption takes root, compassion becomes a crowbar. The state says it is protecting children, then uses that claim to crowd out parents, silence professionals, discipline dissenters, and deny actual science.
That does not mean every counselor is wise. It does not mean every parent is right. It does not mean Christians should be careless with wounded kids. It means the state is not lord over conscience, speech, family, or the meaning of the human person.
Christ is Lord over the counseling office, too.
The state is not.
Colorado Christians should watch this case closely, not because everyone needs to become a lawyer before breakfast, but because this is how cultural control often works. It starts with a licensing rule. Then a board policy. Then a complaint process. Then a lawsuit. Then everyone gets the message: repeat the approved script or risk your career.
This injunction is only temporary. The case continues. Colorado has also changed parts of its law, and even the parties told the judge they disagreed about how those changes affect Chiles’ case going forward.
So Christians should be sober, not smug. We should pray for confused and hurting children. We should support parents trying to love their kids faithfully. We should defend counselors who will not surrender conscience to the state. We should demand laws that protect people from abuse without turning truth into contraband.
Children need compassion.
Families need courage.
Counselors need freedom to speak honestly.
And Colorado’s government needs to remember that a professional license is not a leash for the human conscience and an automatic denial of God’s created order.
Source: Colorado Politics
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