"The Public are in Danger If Counselors Don't Have Licenses"
In a content-neutral environment where anything goes, a license does nothing to stop harm. The government issues licenses to the following:
and other fairy tales.
We're in a time and place in the history of our country where the judicial branch has ruled in favor of libertinism, the executive branch has decided not to enforce existing laws or court decisions, and the legislature is full of bought men.
The Mainstream Media, cable news, and social media influencers and content creators are used to form public opinion, not only in one direction, but in multiple conflicting directions to cause maximum division among the people.
At the same time, the licensing boards perpetuate the notion that the public will be harmed if counselors practice without licenses.
"Without licensing, anyone could call themselves a counselor," they say.
In reality, yes, they "could", but there is no segment of the population saying, "I really wish I could start counseling people for pay without having the knowledge, education, and expertise to do the job." This is an imagined threat.
Humans interact with each other, give advice to each other, counsel each other in the every day challenges of life. No license is necessary, and it doesn't seem that people do all that badly helping each other out.
What really causes harm is upstream of the interactions. What is informing those interactions? TV, movies, podcasts, books, social media, etc..
Not only does the government have no authority to restrict speech over imagined threats, but restricting professional counseling only to the licensed is akin to putting out a forest fire with a water gun.
Just last week, the Minneapolis shooter's manifesto became available online. He wrote at length about his early exposure to extremely violent content online and in movies. There is no license required to get that media in front of children, nor any requirement that such media must be kept away from children, despite the real dangers that exist with a certain segment of the child and young adult population.
Any child can go to Walmart, pick the excessively violent and sexually inappropriate Boondock Saints out of the $3 bin, and pay for it at the checkout line, and there's nothing or nobody stopping him. Kids throughout the country have access to the most gruesome of horror movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime, which in many cases actually causes violent psychopathic behavior, and yet there's no license.
In a content-neutral environment where anything goes, a license does nothing to stop harm. Licensed counselors are already able to encourage or discourage basically any behavior, with few limits. In an environment where the government espouses no moral beliefs, it is impossible to keep people "safe" by requiring licenses. Safe from what? The government issues licenses to:
-counselors who encourage clients to get abortions, and counselors who encourage clients to not have abortions
-counselors who encourage the gay lifestyle, and counselors who explain potential harmful effects of living the gay lifestyle
-counselors who encourage divorce, counselors who discourage divorce
-counselors who encourage "transitioning", and counselors who state that "transitioning" is not going to solve the problem
-counselors who love Neil Diamond, and those who don't.
If the state licensing board takes a morally-neutral position on these very hotly-contested moral issues, then what are they keeping the public safe from?
Safe from being swindled? Does not the state licensing board believe that grown adults have the intelligence to know when they're pouring money into something and not seeing a return?
Licensing isn't the thing that would keep people safe, the prohibiting of doing certain real kinds of harm regardless of profession, is what will curtail some of this danger.
If the state were really serious about keeping the public safe through licensing schemes, they would require applicants to undergo intense psychiatric examinations to determine the psychological and emotional fitness, as well as IQ and reasoning tests to certify the intelligence of licensees. Those things aren't happening.
Used to be that the moral corruption of children was illegal. That some activities and behaviors were considered morally reprehensible and prohibited by law. If legitimate government wants to keep people safe from harm, then legitimate government needs to identify and outlaw certain types of behavior on a moral basis, not employ the lazy an unintelligent "licenses keep people safe" argument.
Justice Thomas stated in Nifla v. Becerra that requirements of the state "must remedy a harm that is “potentially real not purely hypothetical.”
In a country where one can legally take one's children to a "mostly peaceful" political demonstration for any reason or cause without a license, one certainly has nothing to fear in engaging in a regular weekly 45-minute conversation in a private office in exchange for money.
