Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear signed an executive order yesterday banning counseling for minors who want to overcome unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors, and gender confusion. The governor’s action sidesteps the Kentucky legislature after it has repeatedly protected children by denying attempts to enact an actual law banning counseling.
The executive order defines “conversion therapy” (a made-up political term that is not used by counselors) as “any practice, treatment, or intervention that seeks or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.”
The executive order specifically directs Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services to prohibit the use of state and federal funding for any counseling on a minor meant to change feelings or behaviors and requires any state agency to report licensed providers counseling a minor in this way for “potential disciplinary action.”
While the order restricts counseling to change unwanted feelings and behaviors, it also ensures to explain that any “intervention” to facilitate a person’s “coping,” “identity exploration,” or “transition” is acceptable in the state as long as it does not seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Essentially, Governor Beshear’s order ignores minors with unwanted same-sex attractions or gender confusion and makes it illegal for them to get professional help to stop their mental distress.
Liberty Counsel has represented licensed counselors who have used talk therapy to help many people. Through Liberty Counsel’s efforts, city ordinances in Florida and Iowa banning this type of counseling have been struck down or repealed preserving the free speech rights of counselors so they can help their clients to reduce or eliminate unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors, or gender confusion.
In both Otto v. City of Boca Raton and Vazzo v. City of Tampa, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals struck down city ordinances that prohibited licensed counselors from providing voluntary talk therapy to minors seeking help to eliminate unwanted same-sex attractions or gender confusion because they were unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
Several clients of these counselors have testified under oath that without counseling they would have continued down a dark, irreversible path, and it was the counseling that helped them resolve their health issues to embrace their biological sex.
Counseling for gender confusion is actually talk therapy. Counselors are like a GPS for mental health. The clients tell the counselor the direction in which they want to go, and the counselor helps them reach that destination. Counseling operates from the viewpoint that people do not have to be chained to gender dysphoria or unwanted desires, behaviors, or confusion. Clients have the choice to set their counseling objectives.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Governor Beshear’s executive order is unconstitutional. He should wise up because his executive order will cost the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He will lose. Counselors and their clients should have the freedom to choose the counsel of their choice. Gov. Beshear has no business inserting himself between a client and a counselor.”
