Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) took executive action Wednesday to ban conversion therapy for minors in the state, skirting the state’s Legislature, which has on multiple occasions failed to send similar bills to the governor’s desk. 

“Conversion therapy has no basis in medicine or science, and it can cause significant long-term harm to our kids, including increased rates of suicide and depression. This is about protecting our youth from an inhumane practice that hurts them,” Beshear said in a statement Wednesday.

“Kentucky cannot possibly reach its full potential unless it is free from discrimination by or against any citizen — unless all our people feel welcome in our spaces, free from unjust barriers and supported to be themselves,” said Beshear, the only Democratic governor of a Southern state. 

Previous attempts to ban conversion therapy — a discredited practice that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity — in Kentucky have stalled or failed in the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature. Opponents of such measures argue they infringe on freedom of speech and religion and trample the rights of parents. 

The Family Foundation, a conservative Christian organization associated with Focus on the Family, which frequently lobbies against LGBTQ rights, said Beshear’s executive order is “unlawful” and clashes with the tenets of Christianity. 

“This order, like previous failed legislative efforts, is designed to promote false LGBTQ ideologies and muzzle Christian counselors, therapists and pastors from helping children struggling with sexual orientation or gender identity confusion,” David Walls, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

Kentucky state Rep. Lisa Willner, a Louisville Democrat and psychologist who has introduced legislation to ban conversion therapy every year since her election to the Legislature in 2019, celebrated Beshear’s executive order in a statement on Facebook.

“Too many young Kentuckians have suffered — and today we can breathe a collective sigh of relief that we will now have protections in place, and that young lives will be spared,” Willner wrote, noting that the order comes during National Suicide Prevention Month, recognized annually in September. 

While conversion therapy is at least partially banned in more than half the nation — 23 states and Washington, D.C., have outlawed the practice, and five states have limited bans in place — enforcing bans can be difficult. LGBTQ youth across the country are still routinely subjected to conversion therapy practices, studies have found.

Thirteen percent of LGBTQ teenagers and young adults in a survey conducted late last year by The Trevor Project, a leading LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization, said they had at some point been threatened with or subjected to conversion therapy, with transgender and nonbinary youth reporting a history of conversion therapy at higher rates than gay, lesbian and bisexual young people.

A 2020 report by researchers at the Williams Institute, a public policy think tank focusing on sexual orientation and gender identity issues, found that 7 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults aged 18-59 in the U.S. have experienced conversion therapy, overwhelmingly from a religious leader. Those who were subjected to conversion therapy practices, including talk therapy, showed greater odds of having suicidal thoughts and attempts compared with those who had not experienced conversion therapy.

An earlier William Institute report published in 2019 found that an estimated 698,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults in the U.S. had received some form of conversion therapy in their lifetime, including half who said they received it as minors.

Major professional medical organizations have largely denounced conversion therapy, sometimes referred to as “reparative therapy,” as harmful and ineffective. Federal legislation to ban conversion therapy nationwide is backed by groups including the American Counseling Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.