Clink clink clink!Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please?I couldn’t be more delighted to announce a very good thing. In case you haven’t already caught wind of the news via this viral tweet, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists has dismissed the investigation they recently opened against me. Say what? Okay, let me back up a second. Long story short, back in December 2021, a bunch of online trans rights activists (TRA’s) found a few of my blog posts and tweets, and rapidly piled on me with threats to report me to the board for alleged “conversion therapy” (not a thing I do) simply because I speak up for victims of gender medicine. I wrote the board this letter, and all I heard back was that it had been forwarded to the compliance department… then, crickets. Then, in February, a single session of my ROGD parent support group was infiltrated by someone who subsequently made a board complaint too… but only after sending me a series of nasty emails and blog comments, and contacting acquaintances to slander my reputation. On April 19, 2022, I received an official notification that I was being investigated for allegations made by these parties — only one of whom had ever met with me, once, in a group setting online; clearly all of whom were not well and had a bone to pick. I kept this news to myself while working closely with my lawyer, Patricia Campbell (shout out to Candice Jackson for introducing us!); my new friend Jake Wiskerchen, LMFT (you may remember him from episode 2; he also interviewed me recently on Noggin Notes); and my supportive partner. Meanwhile, I was still battling post-covid fatigue, coming down with a cold, had just landed in a new home (and I mean just, as in, four days prior), and was determined to stay on track with the plan to launch You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist May 15. Needless to say, if you contacted me during the past two months and didn’t hear back, now you know why! It was a crazy time. The investigator asked me to provide certain records and a written response to absurdly worded, semantically problematic allegations. After reviewing these, he interviewed me by phone, and then requested the chart of a family that had not made a complaint but whose harrowing story the complainant had inaccurately referenced as evidence of my supposed conduct. At first, we had been hopeful that he was preparing to present his findings to the Board at their next monthly meeting, June 3. We had worked within his timelines to allow for that. But then he told my lawyer he wanted to schedule a second interview with me. She offered him my earliest availability, and then… more crickets. As I waited and wondered, I allowed the situation to slip to the back of my mind as much as possible, relinquishing control of what was no longer in my hands. I tried to re-focus on my life: family, health, clients, podcast, summer plans. I fantasized that maybe the investigator was taking so long because he was thoroughly doing his research and learning a lot in the process. Perhaps he was listening to my interview with Jennifer, or more recently, Helena. Perhaps he himself was a father and had his own concerns about his children being indoctrinated in schools, like this week’s podcast guest Amy Sousa discussed with our Twitter mutual, fierce mama bear Gabrielle Clark recently in this video on Amy’s own channel, Known Heretic. Perhaps the entire board was waking up… Time passed. I had accepted the disappointing reality that my case wouldn’t be presented until the next monthly meeting in July. And then, yesterday, out of the blue, there it was: an official notification from the investigator that the board had heard my case June 3 after all, and dismissed it. They thanked me for my patience. Intermission: Time for a victory dance
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