A funny thing happened on the way to another progressive effort, led by the Rainbow Mafia, to restrict Americans’ freedom: Republican Gov. Paul LePage of Maine “just said no.” He vetoed a bill that would have banned state therapists from working with individuals troubled by feelings of same-sex attraction or the idea that their gender identity and chromosomal reality are a mismatched set — a.k.a. gender dysphoria.

LePage’s reasons for doing so couldn’t be clearer. “This [bill] is so broad that licensed professionals would be prohibited from counseling an individual even at the individual’s own request,” he wrote. “We should not prohibit professionals from counseling an individual even at the individual’s own request. We should not prohibit professionals from providing their expertise to those who seek it for their own personal and basic questions such as, ‘How do I deal with these feelings I am experiencing?’”

He also struck a blow for religious freedom and parental rights. “Parents have the right to seek counsel and treatment for their children from professionals who do not oppose the parents’ own religious beliefs,” he added. “Because the standard of practice for these professionals already prohibits any practice or therapy that would amount to physical or mental abuse, what we are really trying to regulate are the private, consultative conversations between a licensed provider and a client.”

Anyone remember which side of the political divide champions the right to privacy, to the point of indulging in hysterical paroxysms with regard to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh and the thought that Roe v. Wade might be overturned? That particular right to privacy has precipitated more than 60 million abortions since 1973, making a complete mockery of Bill Clinton’s 1996 assertion that the Democrat Party’s policy stance on abortion was that it should be “safe, legal and rare.”

The Rainbow Mafia and its allies in the media and Democrat Party denigrate any conversation between a therapist and a patient that attempts to address an individual’s own concerns with homosexuality and transgenderism as “conversion therapy.” And while a UCLA study revealed that historical concerns about some of the techniques employed in conversion therapy that began as early as the 1890s are legitimate, LePage made it clear he isn’t endorsing anything that could be construed as abusive. “At no time should such treatment take the form of mental or physical abuse,” he wrote, “and such treatment should always be subject to the statutory requirements of the standard of care for that profession.”

The same study reveals that nine states — California, Connecticut, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont — as well as the District of Columbia currently ban conversion therapy. Therapists in those states who employ the practice can be disciplined for doing so. Yet even those states can’t ignore the First Amendment: The laws generally don’t apply to religious or spiritual leaders acting in a religious capacity, provided they are not paid for their services.

The study further notes that opinion polls show a substantial majority of Americans in Florida, Virginia and New Mexico have supported a ban on conversion therapy, and that members of Congress have introduced a bill, The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act of 2017, aimed at classifying conversion therapy provided for a fee as consumer fraud.

No doubt it’s indelicate to ask, but who’s attempting to convert whom? Perhaps polls should be taken to find out whether Americans are on board with state-sanctioned ruination of religious Americans’ livelihoods for failing to embrace the homosexual agenda, or teaching the transgender agenda at the kindergarten level in public schools to children — often with no opt-out choice given to parents who don’t want their children indoctrinated with “LGBTQ” propaganda.

Maybe Americans should be asked if they were okay with an Obama administration that mandated the imposition of the transgender agenda absent any input from Congress. Using Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as their vehicle, Obama & Co. threatened to initiate lawsuits, and withhold federal education funds from states that did not give students claiming to be members of the opposite sex access to bathrooms and lockers rooms of their choice. Other entities followed suit, ultimately leading to a 2015 law in Oregon that provides Medicaid coverage for the gamut of transgender treatments, including surgery — regardless of age.

The ultimate abrogation of parental rights regarding this particular type of “conversion therapy”? In Oregon, patients as young as 15 are not required to get parental consent for it. In other words, children can decide on their own to get life-altering vaginoplasties and double mastectomies — but psychotherapy advising them that such drastic measures might not be a good idea is forbidden.

Matt Moonen, executive director of Equality Maine, insists LePage is wrong. “Studies show that this actually causes harm to minors who are subjected to this so-called treatment so this sends a pretty terrible message from the governor to LGBT kids across the state,” he stated.

Here’s a message for kids across the state: Extensive data collated in 2016 by Dr. James Cantor revealed that 60-90% of children who believe they are transgender change their minds when they reach adulthood. Here’s another message: These children attempt suicide at a rate 20 times higher than their peers.

But psychotherapy that might address these realities should be banned?

LePage pointed out that Maine’s legislature, which failed to override his veto, has a decidedly curious outlook with regard to human rights. Led by Democrats last April, they voted against a bill that would have criminalized female genital mutilation (FGM) — as in the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for cultural, rather than medical, reasons. “What we should not be doing is counting potential victims at-risk by counting the number of Somali, Egyptian and Gideon females in immigrant families in Maine. Not unless we are willing to face the racism in that calculation and the racism and misogyny entrenched in so many of us,” declared Democrat State Rep. Charlotte Warren at the time.

How about facing the calculation that progressives will abide barbaric traditions utterly inimical to American values under the rubric of supporting multiculturalism and diversity?

LePage sees the irony in the legislature’s priorities. Yet irony is the wrong word, and California’s legislature reveals why. While Maine legislators would like to see certain conversations banned, California legislators passed a law in 2015 compelling conversations: Pro-life medical clinics were ordered to supply abortion literature to their clients. That law was just overturned (5-4) by the Supreme Court, which viewed the mandate as a violation of free speech.

How can two different state legislatures reach diametrically opposed ideas regarding free speech? Because protecting it comes in a distant second to serving the progressive agenda. And if it takes diametrically opposed and thoroughly misguided positions on the First Amendment to “win by any means necessary,” so be it.

Gov. Paul LePage is one governor who won’t be intimidated by the Rainbow Mafia — at least this time. Here’s hoping there are others.