I did not intend to offend with the gay marriage example. Its just another law that I personally don't believe in or understand the need for.

Anyway, let's replace it with the illegality of marijuana in several states. And I'm only using examples because I confuse myself if I am too abstract.

The point I was trying to make is that perhaps we should examine our appeal to the illegality of patient-client relationships. To me, that argument doesn't hold water. To convince me, you must give some arguments about why that illegality is different from the illegality of possessing marijuana.

Just a note that I've certainly been in ordinary relationships which really messed with my head - I felt suicidal when they ended, the person manipulated me or took advantage of me etc. To be concrete, I once dated a guy who I was very emotionally invested in and only realized after he broke up with me that he wanted to use me to practice having sex with. He was getting married through an arranged marriage with a person from his country and wanted to be more sexually experienced. To me that's not any better than a dr. taking advantage of you because you are enthralled with them. And it could be the case that a relationship with a therapist is much healthier.