At 17, Ken Williams was on the brink of suicide. A childhood filled with sexual abuse had warped Ken’s understanding of relationships and the role of men. But something deep inside Ken compelled the young man to ask his parents to send him to Christian counseling before he could kill himself.

Sadly, the Christian change counseling that saved Ken’s life has been banned in more than 100 cities and states across the country. Liberty Counsel has managed to overturn 23 of these bans, but 87 remain on the books. This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Chiles vs. Salazar and rule once and for all if states can ban this lifesaving counsel. We are fighting to save young women and men, just like Ken. Last Friday, we filed our brief at the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Ken’s childhood felt like a living hell. At age 8, a male family member began molesting the boy and regularly forcing the child to watch male-on-male pornography. It didn’t help that Ken was the “scrawniest” kid in class through all 12 years of public school. Boys on the playground regularly bullied Ken for his small stature, calling him a “faggot” and a “homo.”

Ken began to reject masculinity as dangerous. “I distanced myself from most boys,” says Ken. “Definitely the rough and tumble ones—and canceled the masculinity around me as best as I could.”

By the time Ken was in middle school, he felt a need for masculine connection. But the abuse he had suffered warped Ken’s need, deceiving him into thinking that perhaps the boys on the playground were right. Perhaps he was “gay.”

“I didn’t want to have those desires,” Ken recalls, saying these unwanted attractions caused him to hate himself.

By the time he was 17, Ken felt so helpless he began planning suicide. “I just couldn’t imagine fighting the same-sex desires my whole life or bearing the weight of the loneliness and self-hatred I felt on a daily basis.”

But the thought of killing himself terrified Ken. Tired of living in shame, Ken finally confessed to his parents and asked them to take him to a Christian counselor.

“Those five years of counseling saved my life because it gave me encouragement and a totally confidential space to share everything,” Ken says. “All the shame over sexual encounters, pent up anger from being bullied, feelings of inadequacy, codependent fixations, and loneliness.”

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Christian counseling helped Ken “discover underlying issues contributing to my sexual identity confusion."

As Ken’s counseling and healing journey continued, “I began to experience God as ... a kind Father who could be trusted. These were attributes of God I’d not known before,” says Ken.

As his childhood traumas began to heal, his addition to gay pornography and same sex attractions began to disappear. Ken realized he was truly free when he met a lovely young woman at church and was “captivated by the sight and thought of her.” Ken eventually married that girl, and the couple now have four beautiful children. The family has a wonderful life — free of the agony Ken once experienced and filled with the ultimate joy only found in a relationship with the Lord.

“My wife is my closest and most treasured companion ... Today, I have peace. I’m blessed with plenty of friends, and I feel known and valued by even the men in my community,” says Ken. “I enjoy my life. None of that was true before.”

In Chiles v. Salazar, Liberty Counsel argues that Christian counseling bans restrict speech solely based on viewpoint. Such laws in the realm of counseling are unprecedented and go directly against the fundamental essence of counseling, namely that the client has the right of self-autonomy to choose the counseling objective.

Counselors are like a GPS. The client chooses the direction of the counseling goal, and the counselor helps the client navigate the traffic to achieve the client’s objective.

Like a GPS, the client, not the counselor, is in control of the intended destination. But Christian change counseling bans derail the client by always misdirecting the client 180 degrees from the client’s objective. These change counsel bans not only violate the First Amendment, but they are also harmful to a person’s mental health and well-being.

And if such a ban had been in place in Ken’s state, he would almost certainly be dead by his own hand. Ken will be the first to tell you that Christian counseling not only saved his life, but it also led him to a wonderful life he would have never otherwise known.

Help us overturn Christian Change Counseling bans with your gift today, and have your gift DOUBLED in impact by a special Challenge Grant!

And please, pray for the young men and women struggling to escape the LGBTQ’s transgender trap.

Mat Staver
Founder and Chairman
Liberty Counsel

Source:

“Ken Williams, California.” CHANGED Movement, October 18, 2023. Changedmovement.com/stories//ken-williams.