A 23-year-old Michigan man who was medically transitioned at 13 traveled to Sacramento to tell California lawmakers that the very treatments the state wants to protect left him with lasting physical harm, and that a pending bill would make it harder for therapists to question the path he wishes someone had questioned for him.

Jonni Skinner, an ambassador for the advocacy group Genspect, testified before the California Senate Judiciary Committee against Senate Bill 934, a measure sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener. The bill would allow people who underwent so-called "conversion therapy" to sue their providers for malpractice, even years after the counseling took place.

On its face, the bill targets practices meant to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. But Skinner and other critics, including the California Family Council, say SB 934 is written so broadly that it could expose any therapist who explores the roots of a young patient's gender distress to ruinous litigation. For Skinner, the issue is personal. He told Fox News Digital that no one ever bothered to ask why he felt the way he did before putting him on a medical conveyor belt.

A childhood transition no one questioned

Skinner said he was diagnosed with high-functioning autism at a young age. As puberty arrived, he grew increasingly uncomfortable with his body and carried shame about the possibility that he might grow up to be gay or an effeminate man. At 13, he was referred to a gender therapist and then an endocrinologist, who prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

In his telling, the system moved fast and asked few questions.

"The medical and mental health providers didn't bother to ask why I felt the way I did. They poisoned my body with blockers and hormones, arresting my puberty and messing with my development. The result is I'm a 23-year-old gay man who's never had an orgasm and may never experience one. Let that sink in."

That quote, delivered to Fox News Digital, distills the case Skinner brought to the committee room. He described fainting spells, painful muscle spasms, urinary problems, and sexual dysfunction, all of which he attributes to the drugs he was given as a child. Years after stopping treatment, he said those problems persist.

The turning point came in 2023, when a new endocrinologist suggested he stop taking the drugs to see whether his symptoms would improve. Around the same time, Skinner began reading leaked internal reports from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, known as WPATH, which he said revealed doubts among the field's own practitioners about the science behind pediatric gender treatments.

The combination shook him. He told Fox News Digital that he realized the evidence base for what had been done to him was thin.

"And I had found that there was, you know, no, low quality to no evidence to doing this to me."

What SB 934 would do, and what critics say it would silence

Wiener's bill defines its target as "sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts." His office told Fox News Digital that the measure is narrowly aimed at the practice of trying to force someone from one identity to another, gay to straight, trans to cisgender, or the reverse.

Wiener framed the legislation in stark terms:

"Conversion therapy is psychological torture and quack science that does nothing but harm vulnerable young people. SB 934 cracks down on that horrifying practice, but makes clear that therapists will not be penalized for good faith explorations of a patient's gender identity or sexuality."

Skinner sees it differently. He argued that the bill's language would prevent therapists from doing exactly the kind of exploratory work he wishes someone had done with him, asking a distressed child where the feelings come from before reaching for a prescription pad.

"In all those years, if one therapist would have just talked with me about the origins of my distress, instead of just affirming me and suggesting, you know, further medical intervention is the only solution to me, perhaps I could have been spared much of what I'm suffering with today."

He went further, telling Fox News Digital that under SB 934, therapists would face legal jeopardy for questioning a young patient's stated gender identity or probing the underlying causes of dysphoria. The federal House vote to criminalize sex-change surgeries and puberty blockers for minors shows that the national debate over these treatments is far from settled, yet California appears determined to move in the opposite direction.

"They're not able to, under this bill, question gender identity or really delve with these patients into the underlying causes of their dysphoria. That would be considered conversion therapy under SB 934."

The Supreme Court backdrop

SB 934 arrives against a shifting legal landscape. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in Chiles v. Salazar that a Colorado law banning so-called conversion therapy violated the First Amendment because it discriminated against certain viewpoints. Demonstrators gathered outside the court on Oct. 7, 2025, as oral arguments were heard in the case.

That decision complicates the path for any state trying to restrict what therapists may say to patients about gender and sexuality. California's bill, scheduled for another hearing on April 20, will have to navigate the same constitutional terrain. Whether Wiener's office believes SB 934 can survive that scrutiny remains an open question.

Skinner's own experience raises a pointed irony. He described the gender-affirming medical pathway, the very approach California wants to shield from legal challenge, as a form of conversion therapy in its own right. He is a gay man. He said the system steered him away from accepting that reality and toward a medical identity that left him physically damaged.

"For me, it did very much act as a chemical conversion therapy."

Who speaks for the children harmed?

Skinner reserved particular frustration for the adults in the system, the therapists, doctors, and advocates who he said acted out of misplaced compassion without stopping to think critically about what was driving a child's distress.

"They feel like they're doing it out of compassion because that's what they're being told... but no one is thinking along the lines of, well, what is making these kids distressed in their bodies? No one is trying to delve in and understand where they're coming from or how they're arriving at these conclusions."

The pattern Skinner describes, affirmation without investigation, is not unique to his case. Across the country, the intersection of gender medicine and institutional accountability has produced sharp conflicts. In New York, Attorney General Letitia James faces a claim that she terminated a lawyer over his stance on gender care, a case that underscores how politically charged the issue has become inside government offices themselves.

Meanwhile, the broader cultural fallout from gender-identity debates continues to surface in unexpected and sometimes tragic ways, as recent events in Tumbler Ridge have shown.

SB 934 passed one committee and now moves toward its April 20 hearing. Wiener's office insists the bill protects good-faith therapy. Critics say it would chill exactly the kind of open-ended counseling that might have spared Skinner a decade of regret. The bill's text, its enforcement mechanisms, and its interaction with the Supreme Court's First Amendment ruling in Chiles v. Salazar remain subjects the California legislature will have to address, if it chooses to.

The real question Sacramento won't ask

Jonni Skinner did not go to Sacramento to make a political argument. He went to describe what happened to his body when every adult in the room decided affirmation was the only acceptable answer. He is 23. He carries the consequences every day.

The state of California wants to make it easier to sue therapists who ask hard questions, and harder for anyone to slow down the pipeline that failed him. If lawmakers cannot hear a young man describe irreversible harm and pause long enough to reconsider, the bill is not really about protecting children. It is about protecting an ideology from scrutiny.