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The legislature’s action ensures that patients are able to get the help they need rather than be forced into counseling that tells patients they are born in the wrong body or they must accept unwanted same-sex attraction.
Kentucky’s Republican supermajority voted to override nearly all of Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear’s vetoes last week, including a bill that lifted Beshear’s ban on non-gender-affirming counseling. That bill also blocks the use of Medicaid funds for gender transitions.
However, it was the override of the ban on so-called “conversion therapy” that has gotten the most attention, especially since the Supreme Court will soon hear a case examining whether the government can prescribe what counselors can and cannot say to a patient during a therapy session.
The roots of the bill go back to September 2024 when Beshear signed an executive order banning conversion therapy, claiming that counseling anything but affirmation of someone’s same-sex attraction or preferred gender identity causes harm to LGBT youth.
The order eliminated any use of state funds to organizations or counselors who counseled a person to accept their biological sex and also mandated that such a counselor be disciplined by the appropriate licensing board.
The executive order specifically exempted practices that provide “acceptance” of a person’s gender dysphoria.
Critics claim that counselors who try to help patients overcome their unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria are attempting to change that patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. These critics argue the practice is “discredited” and causes an increase in mental health issues and suicide for LGBT youth.
Former President Joe Biden also signed an order banning the use of conversion therapy in the United States and around the world, and 23 states and some local governments have also outlawed the ability of counselors to discuss unwanted same-sex attraction or accepting a person’s biological sex.
Yet as numerous court rulings have found, and several pending suits allege, bans on so-called conversion therapy actually censor counselors, ministers, and others who seek to provide the best possible care. In many of the cases, counselors have clients or potential clients who, for reasons such as religious beliefs or trying to save their marriage, seek to overcome their struggles with unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction or fears regarding their gender identity, but mental health professionals are forced to turn them away.
In other situations, counselors who, either due to their religious beliefs or professional opinion, cannot in good conscience affirm a person’s identification with another gender are forced to refuse to treat clients with those issues.
During this legislative session, the Kentucky General Assembly passed a bill that overruled Beshear’s executive order. The “Mental Health Counseling Protection Act” establishes a counselor’s right to practice free of government intrusion. The legislation also prohibits the use of Medicaid funds for the purpose of gender transitions.
But Beshear vetoed the bill, claiming that “Conversion therapy is torture, and that’s why I signed an executive order banning it in Kentucky. Legislators seek to overturn those protections with HB 495, which I vetoed at the Fairness Dinner. I’m going to keep fighting for what’s right — and that’s loving thy neighbor.”
Last week, the Republican supermajority overrode Beshear’s veto.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver, whose firm has successfully represented counselors in cases challenging bans on protected conversations, said,
“We commend the Kentucky legislature in this veto override for protecting religious liberty, free speech, as well as licensed counselors and their minor clients needing their help. Governor Andy Beshear had no business inserting himself between a client and a counselor. Counselors and their clients should have the freedom to choose the counsel of their choice.”
Whether conversion therapy bans are a constitutional violation of free speech or within the purview of the state and licensing authorities will soon be clarified by the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments from a counselor who says Colorado’s conversion therapy ban is tantamount to governmental censorship of private conversations.
One thing that needs to be made clear is that there is no unique conversion therapy “method” or “practice.”
To hear these politicians and activists, you’d think it somehow involved straitjackets, electroshock treatments, and a Thorazine drip. In fact, it is nothing more than traditional psychotherapy, sometimes called talk therapy, whereby a patient asks a counselor for assistance with a mental or emotional problem and the counselor provides counseling to explore the concern at hand, tries to understand the underlying causes and impact, and comes up with ways to better manage or solve those concerns.
The only difference is what can be counseled. A conversion therapy ban says the counselor must provide a singular solution to a specific problem — affirmation of the same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. Any suggestion, concern, opinion, or question outside of that solution could be grounds for the counselor losing his or her license and livelihood.
The result is that too many patients — particularly those who are struggling with identity issues and confusion — have no place to turn to for answers or even empathy.
Thanks to state conversion therapy bans, no counselor is allowed to explore the possibility that a child’s gender confusion might be the result of undiagnosed autism, family trauma, anxiety, peer pressure, sexual abuse, or some other cause.
According to the state, gender confusion is something to be celebrated, and therefore it must be unquestionably affirmed and then treated medically and surgically — not psychologically.
Imagine if this standard was mandated for any other counseling scenario. Can the state demand that couples therapists only recommend divorce as the solution to a troubled marriage? Can it tell a counselor to refrain from trying to help an anorexic who is starving herself because she really believes she is fat?
The left’s efforts to force people to be transgender or homosexual against their own desires and to censor professional counselors and ministers who seek only the best for those they counsel is nothing short of coerced adherence to government ideology.
It doesn’t matter to the left that gender transitions have been proven to be catastrophic for patients or that nearly all children will grow to accept their biological sex absent intervention. No, to the left, counseling a child that they don’t need to undergo surgery to be in the right body is torture but mutilating a child and subjecting them to dangerous hormone treatments is love.
In truth, the only “conversion therapy” being practiced right now are by those who tell a child they are in the wrong body and so that body needs to be irreversibly changed.
Thankfully, the legislature overrode this veto. In Kentucky, at least, the government is officially out of the censorship business. And that means counselors are free to practice according to their training and expertise and patients are free to get the help they desire.
Now, the Supreme Court just needs to step up and make sure this becomes reality for the rest of the country.
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