Worlds Behind Words 2: Supreme Court, Section 230 & LGBTQ Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/26

William Dempsey, LICSW, is a Boston-based clinical social worker and LGBTQ+ mental-health advocate. He founded Heads Held High Counselling, a virtual, gender-affirming group practice serving Massachusetts and Illinois, where he and his team support clients navigating anxiety, depression, trauma, ADHD, and gender dysphoria. Clinically, Dempsey integrates EMDR, CBT, IFS, and expressive modalities, with a focus on accessible, equity-minded care. Beyond the clinic, he serves on the board of Drag Story Hour, helping expand inclusive literacy programming and resisting censorship pressures. His public scholarship and media appearances foreground compassionate, evidence-based practice and the lived realities of queer communities across North America.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Dempsey on a dense week for LGBTQ rights. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to revisit Section 230, leaving Grindr shielded in a case involving a rape of a 15-year-old, raising platform, legal, and victim concerns. They parse polling showing broadening support for banning conversion therapy and the cultural shift it signals. Pride’s dual role as protest and celebration is defended. A Guardian report on abuses at a Louisiana ICE facility highlights compounded harms for queer and trans migrants. Dempsey warns of fear, legislative backlash—especially in Texas—and hypocrisy, urging vigilance, community solidarity, and rights-centered policy now.

Interview conducted October 15, 2025.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Once more, we are here again. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to federal protections for tech platforms based on a case involving Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It refused an opportunity to revisit the broad legal immunity of tech companies for content hosted on their platforms. This happened on Tuesday. It was based on an appeal in a lawsuit against Grindr from a male plaintiff who was raped at age 15 by an adult man who matched with him via the app. The lower court’s ruling was upheld, dismissing the lawsuit seeking monetary damages against Los Angeles–based Grindr because the company was protected from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This case involves several elements—from the company and app perspective, the legal perspective, and, of course, the victim’s perspective, who was denied some form of justice. What are your overall thoughts on that and the likely social fallout?

William Dempsey: I’m not aware of the app’s requirements. It is 18+, but this raises a broader issue about parental guidance regarding what children are doing online. While Grindr was designed to be a dating app, in practice, it is not—it is a hookup app. If you are 15, you should not be on it to begin with. That is not to suggest any victim-blaming. The adult still went there and chose to engage, consensually or not, with a 15-year-old. There have been more stories like this emerging—teens who have either consensually or non-consensually had sex with adults from the app. It highlights a broader issue of who initially has access to these platforms.

Jacobsen: The topic of conversion therapy is critical. I may need to refer to more ideologically biased sources, whether left or right, if necessary. There have been some significant follow-ups on this issue. A recent poll measured public opinion on conversion therapy—specifically, whether it should be banned. This follows a U.S. Supreme Court case involving a Christian counsellor, Brian Tingley, who argued that Washington State’s ban on conversion therapy for minors violated his First Amendment rights. 

The Court declined to hear the case. The poll didn’t specify the type of practice as it relates to gender identity, but it revealed a noticeable partisan divide. Seventy-five percent of Democrats believe conversion therapy should be banned, along with 55 percent of independents and 45 percent of Republicans. The margin of error was approximately 3.5 percent. Even so, a significant portion of Republicans are against the practice and support banning it. What does this suggest to you about how public attitudes have shifted over the past several decades?

Dempsey: I think it’s not only indicative of, hopefully, a cultural shift, but also of light being shed on what conversion therapy actually is in practice—and that people are beginning to understand it. Even those who might agree with it as a theory, or with its intended purpose, don’t agree with the idea of, for example, electrocuting children. That’s just torture. While I would hope it’s indicative mainly of a cultural shift, part of my pessimism—call it practicality if you will—is that it’s more about the nature of how the change is happening rather than what it represents. 

But regardless, it’s a sign of progress, and hopefully one that continues in that direction. I think, as we discussed last time, it’s also indicative of a broader shift among conservative parties, moving away from having a negative view of sexual diversity—of people who aren’t heterosexual—and more toward focusing on gender diversity, with a greater backlash there. And while one might consider conversion therapy as a method for, quote-unquote, turning people cis, I haven’t heard of that. So I think this also shows a cultural shift away from homophobic rhetoric in legislation and more of a pushback against gender diversity.

Jacobsen: It’s important to reiterate that recently the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Medical Association have all stated that conversion therapy is pseudoscientific, baseless, and harmful. “Harmful,” particularly in the context of the electrocution example, is almost a euphemism. In Atlanta, Georgia—which I’ve been to—I had my first grits at a Waffle House. That was great. The full meal costs as much as a venti coffee at the Starbucks across the park. 

There are very distinct cultures in Atlanta. There was an Atlanta Pride Festival on October 11, alongside the annual Transgender Rights March in the city’s Midtown. It looks like this was—ah, I see what happened. Sometimes when people use AI-generated captions to summarize photos, they produce strange summary symbols and errors. That’s what happened with Reuters Connect. Anyway, advocates marched during the Pride Festival. Thoughts? In other words, what is the social importance of community events like this, where people come together publicly during festivals of this nature?

Dempsey: I could go on a whole soapbox about this. In general, we must continue to have representations of things like Pride—to remember that there’s still progress to be made. Pride started as a protest for a reason. Until the community has equal rights—equal compared to its cisgender, heterosexual, and other counterparts—there’s still a need for protest. Equally, there’s value in celebrating and embracing the aspects of Pride that embody that. There has been considerable debate around whether Pride should be celebratory, protest-oriented, or both. I think it should be both. 

It’s equally important, in any movement toward equality, to celebrate the wins along the way and not get lost in the fight. And, to that point, it’s also important not to get lost in the party and to remember there’s still work to be done. In many communities—the queer community being no exception—there are subdivisions that, once certain rights are secured, tend to pull the ladder up behind them, proverbially speaking. I’ve personally seen that—not as a generalization, but fairly often—with some gay men who say, “We have marriage equality, so we don’t need to worry about trans rights.” That’s just one example.

It’s essential to continue having spaces for community gathering and activism, especially in the current political climate, where many people in the queer community feel that their rights are under attack. It’s valuable to have these events to physically see how many people are either part of the community or allies of it. It serves as a reminder of collective action and the power of numbers, because it can feel isolating and hopeless for many people.

Jacobsen: The Guardian reported this morning that at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, detainees were forced into hard labour, sexually assaulted, and stalked by an assistant warden. Queer and trans immigrants at the detention facility also faced medical neglect. They were repeatedly ignored or faced retaliation for speaking out. They were forced to perform manual labour for as little as one dollar per day. Mario Garcia Valenzuela stated, “I was treated worse than an animal… we don’t deserve to be treated like this.” Sarah Decker, a senior staff attorney with Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, said, “This was a sadistic late-night work program… it was designed to target vulnerable trans men or masculine-presenting LGBTQ people who were coerced into participating.” There’s a long list of similar accounts. When people are dehumanized like this, coming from already marginalized identities, how does that impact their sense of security in the world moving forward?

When people are dehumanized like this—immigrants in the United States at a tense time for immigration—and they’re coming from minority identities already, whether from a human rights standpoint or a moral one, their rights are being violated. We’re talking about medical neglect, punishment and retaliation for speaking out, sexual assault, and forced labour late at night for as little as a dollar a day. Even in the best-case scenario, they get out soon. How does that affect their sense of safety and security in the world and their ability to trust society?

Dempsey: It certainly instills much fear in people, particularly among the communities directly affected by this kind of violence. It also creates fear in other marginalized communities that have spent the last century fighting for their rights. In the queer community, for example, there’s growing fear as more anti-trans legislation emerges that marriage equality could be overturned—which, in the scope of our nation’s history, wasn’t that long ago. I’ve even had conversations with others about how, for instance, the 19th Amendment was only ratified a century ago. Many people worry that ignoring or revoking rights is a slippery slope—that it could snowball into a larger rollback of freedoms.

So there’s much fear. What I’m saying, in part, is that many people are left asking: if it can happen to them, what’s stopping it from happening to me? Especially as immigrants have become the focal point of this administration’s hostility—my own word choice—and as both immigrants and citizens are being removed from the country, people are wondering: when they’re gone, who’s next? Many of the individuals inflicting this violence are doing so out of internal anger they feel compelled to express. And when they no longer have someone to target, they’ll find someone else. So, to come back to your question, it’s instilling a profound and understandable fear in people.

Jacobsen: If people change laws and don’t care—versus those who hate a group of people and therefore change the law to remove their rights, restrict them, or reduce them—there are three different frames there. Which is psychologically more concerning? The person who hates and acts on it, or the person who does it completely indifferently, holding dehumanization in their mind without emotion?

Dempsey: That’s a great question. I’m not certain, but I imagine they’re viewed similarly. Communities tend to focus more on the impact of the action rather than the motivation behind it.

Jacobsen: The ACLU has been tracking LGBTQ rights across U.S. state legislatures for 2025. So far, there have been 616 anti-LBGTQ bills introduced, according to the ACLU’s tracking. That number hasn’t been updated this month—it was last updated on September 19, 2025—and today is October 16. Some of the worst states by colour coding appear to be Texas and Montana, though the map uses the same colour once states hit 16 or more bills. Texas alone has 97—nearly one-sixth of the total number of anti-LBGTQ bills in the United States.

Many other states are contributing significantly as well. I doubt prior years looked this bad. Also, to your earlier point, I’m aware that former President Barack Obama was initially not in favour of marriage equality—he once said he believed marriage was between one man and one woman. So it raises the question of whether his later support for marriage equality was a principled evolution or simply political convenience, a move by a liberal intellectual. That’s an open question. But in the current period, these bills are alarming. What are your thoughts, particularly on Texas being by far the leader in this?

Dempsey: If you talk to most people in the queer community, there’s a long history of precisely that kind of behaviour, and it’s not limited to Obama. There’s a long-standing pattern of people saying one thing, then changing their stance later, which raises the question of whether people can change and, if they can, how to distinguish between genuine belief and political convenience. That’s why I think most of the community doesn’t care whether someone “buys what they’re selling.” 

We care about getting the rights—we just want the damn rights. Whether someone agrees personally or not, we want the rights. Texas doesn’t surprise me. It’s historically—and in recent times—a very conservative state with deeply rooted conservative views. It’s also worth noting that while most studies focus on intimate partner violence, the same psychological principle applies: studies are showing that internalized homophobia correlates pretty strongly with intimate partner violence.

On a more humorous note, there have been multiple Republican conventions where Grindr has crashed because of the number of “DL” profiles—men living on the down low. It’s not beyond us. It’s even reached a point where Grindr themselves have threatened to release the information of Republican legislators if they continue on this warpath, essentially saying they’ll be outed. So it’s become pretty obvious what’s going on. We’ve all known this for decades, but now it’s more visible thanks to the internet.

Jacobsen: Comedy is prophetic.

Dempsey: Especially in politics. It really speaks to a larger issue in states like Texas, where there’s a strong correlation between religious values and conservatism, and how that ties directly into the rhetoric that “queer is bad.” Because many of these individuals don’t feel safe being who they are—this is my own hypothesis—they instead enact legislation that reflects their internal struggles: suppress, deny, and wish it away so it no longer exists. There’s a clear parallel between that internal repression and what they’re trying to do externally to the community, whether in part or as a whole.

Jacobsen: Who was that gentleman who headed one of the major anti-gay—or maybe pro-conversion therapy—organizations? Remember, he was featured in that documentary? He was a prominent Christian figure, held up as a success story of “it worked, I’m no longer gay.” He’s probably in his fifties or sixties now. Eventually, the façade fell apart after decades.

Dempsey: Pray Away was the name of the documentary. It focused on evangelical movements, although I’m unsure if it was exclusive to them. 

Jacobsen (2021) was produced by Jason Blum, Ryan Murphy, and Christine Salgas. It focused on ex-gay leaders. Michael Bussee was the person. He was in the documentary and talked about how his sexual orientation never changed as a result of any of those practices. He co-founded Exodus International back in 1976. He later left the organization, came out as gay, and publicly condemned the movement he helped create. What a mind-bending experience that must have been. 

Dempsey: You’ll also see the reverse happen. Especially in the trans community—not a large percentage, but a noticeable number of people—some “detransition” after finding religion, saying they’ve “repented” or “regretted their sins.” The conservative movement loves to elevate these people—maybe “totem” isn’t the right word, but they’re definitely put on a pedestal.

Jacobsen: They’re given a platform, right? They appear on shows with the Carlsons or Lila Roses of the world, saying things like, “As a former atheist,” or, “As a former gay,” or, “As a former trans person.” There’s always a “former.” Sometimes even “former Satanist.”

Dempsey: Or my favourite—Milo Yiannopoulos.

Jacobsen: Oh, yeah. He was just a firecracker and then gone.

Dempsey: Well, he was still active when I was living in Boston during the Straight Pride parade. 

Jacobsen: Oh, that’s right! There was that.

Dempsey: Yep, he was their Grand Marshal.

Jacobsen: Why is it called a Grand Marshal? That sounds almost Confederate.

Dempsey: It probably is. Many American traditions still have their roots in Confederate heritage.

Jacobsen: Okay, I think we’re out of time now.

Dempsey: Yeah, I think so.

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