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Doctors’ Right to Try to Convert Gun Owners, But Not Gays

Posted on December 19, 2015June 26, 2025 by Dissent

Noah Feldman writes:

Should the First Amendment protect what doctors can say to their patients in the privacy of the examining room? Weighing state prohibitions on gay conversion therapy, liberals have tended to think the state should be able to regulate medical treatment without worrying about free speech.

Now the shoe’s on the other foot: Florida’s ban on physicians asking patients about gun ownership puts liberals in the position of wanting to protect the doctor-patient relationship. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld the Florida “docs vs. Glocks” law this week on the ground that the state’s interest in protecting gun ownership outweighs physicians’ free-speech interests — a result sure to trouble liberals.

This decision is problematic in its application of free-speech law, as First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh points out. But what’s really wrong is our whole framework in using free speech to analyze communication between a medical professional and a patient.

Read more on Bloomberg. Reading the court decisions from Florida, it seems pretty apparent that the jurists are twisting themselves into pretzels to justify trying to find the law constitutional. It’s a bad law, it should be overturned, and the govt. should stay the hell out of doctor-patient conversations and treatment unless there’s a clear threat to patient health or safety.

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  • California fines hospitals for breaches of medical privacy
Category: CourtHealthcare

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2 thoughts on “Doctors’ Right to Try to Convert Gun Owners, But Not Gays”

  1. Jim says:
    December 19, 2015 at 8:46 pm

    “It’s a bad law, it should be overturned, and the govt. should stay the hell out of doctor-patient conversations and treatment unless there’s a clear threat to patient health or safety.” – Conversion therapy is a threat to their safety and parents have been known to have their kids taken to foreign countries even where physical abuse is pulled on top of the emotional and mental abuse.

    The idea of conversion has morphed into the mind set that makes killing OK because said person has chosen to be gay. Conversion therapy also lives along side the idea the government should come and regulate that part of people’s lives.

    1. Dissent says:
      December 20, 2015 at 10:30 am

      I generally agreed with the ban on conduct (conversion therapy). The ban has been upheld in at least three states now, if memory serves. Although, to be honest, the courts really didn’t have a lot of super-hard evidence of the harm/risk of conversion therapy. Not sure it would have been upheld if “strict scrutiny” standard had been applied.

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