Common sense and the First Amendment won a significant victory in Florida recently. The city of Boca Raton and Palm Beach County had passed ordinances forbidding paid counselors to counsel children and teens who wished to overcome same sex attraction or gender dysphoria. All a counselor could do was affirm the feelings of the child as normal and council to consider transitioning by puberty blockers and mutilating surgery.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals declared that this was a violation of the free speech right. This ruling is important because it sets a precedent for other cases. Twenty other states have caved to the homosexual steamroller and put laws in place tying the hands of counsellors who wish to help children overcome this delusion. This opens the door for other cases to succeed in overturning these restrictions.

So far, these restrictions have not affected Christian pastors and youth leaders from providing such counsel if it is free, but often, this issue is passed off to the “professionals.” And these laws forbid paid counselors from guiding the children into accepting their God-given sex. Given the strategy of the homosexual lobby, if they could make these laws stick, it would be only a matter of time until the same restrictions would be placed on church counselors.

This victory proves that stern resistance to these attacks can succeed. Liberty Counsel, one of many religious liberty legal aid organizations, successfully fought this case. If we are going to stop these attacks on the next generation, it will need to come at the local level. Church leaders must alert congregations to the danger so that they can resist ungodly laws.

But more important, churches must do their primary job of showing how the power of the gospel will change lives so that they will not be subject to Satan’s lies. Gospel tracts have a part in that effort.