People participate in the International WorldPride Rally and Freedom March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial on June 8, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
Week after week, teenager Brandon Long participated in counseling sessions that he felt defined his identity as a failure.
Long, now an ordained minister in northern Kentucky, told Kentucky lawmakers about the years he spent in therapy to free him from “same-sex attractions.”
“Imagine being told session after session that if you stay the way you are, you will be rejected,” he said.
Long testified in February before a Kentucky House committee against a Republican-sponsored candidate Bill that would invalidate Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s candidacy 2024 Executive Order which banned the controversial practice known as “conversion therapy” for minors.
Conversion therapy is an umbrella term for controversial efforts to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ+ people. Sometimes called “reparative therapy,” it may include talk therapy and religious counseling electric shockcausing pain aversion therapy AND physical isolation.
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The bill, Long told lawmakers, “creates a legal shield for conversion therapy, allowing parents to force their children into a practice condemned by every major mental health and mental health organization in the world.”
Kentucky’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the bill he overrode the governor’s veto in March.
Conversion therapy has been condemned by major medical organizations, including: American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. They argue that it is ineffective and harmful and puts LGBTQ+ people at risk of depression, substance apply, suicide and other mental health problems.
More than half of states, including Pennsylvania, It has banned or restricted the practice for underage patients since California became the first to do so in 2012, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit research organization that tracks LGBTQ+ laws and policies.
But political currents are changing. Conservative majorities in courts, state legislatures and at the federal level have reshaped the legal landscape, opening the door for Republican lawmakers and conservative Christian groups to reinstate a practice that has been thoroughly discredited by the medical community.
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In March, the US Supreme Court agreed to consider the case defiant Colorado’s 2019 Conversion Therapy Ban because of freedom of speech. The decision marks a change from 2017when the court refused to hear a challenge to the California ban, and 2023when he refused to hear objections to Washington’s ban.
The Supreme Court’s decision, which is not expected until next year, could reverse – or make eternal – conversion therapy bans across the country.
Last month, a Virginia court partially ruled knocked down a 2020 state law banning conversion therapy for minors, a victory for conservative Christian organizations. GOP lawmakers in Michigan presented a bill repealing the state ban. AND MissouriA Republican attorney general has filed a lawsuit to overturn local bans on conversion therapy.
On the other hand, in Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court cleared the way earlier this year, the state permanently banned the practice.
“The World Has Changed”
Although organized attempts to “cure” homosexuality have been made for centuries, “ex-gay” groups that promised to change sexual orientation began to gain popularity in the 1990s as political debates erupted over same-sex marriage and gay military service, said Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York. York. He is also a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University whose research has focused on gender and sexuality.
But after same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts in 2004, and then in other states, the influence of conversion therapy advocates waned.
As of this year, 23 states and Washington, D.C., prevent licensed health care providers from administering conversion therapy to minors, according to the study. analysis state law as part of the Movement Advancement Project. Four more states restrict the practice, for example by not allowing public funding for conversion therapy services.
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State laws typically impose fines or discipline the professional licenses of practitioners who attempt to engage minors in conversion therapy. They do not necessarily prevent clergy or unlicensed counselors from attempting to do so.
Drescher said the bans represent more of a public statement of acceptance of LGBTQ+ people than a widespread preventive measure.
“The bans reinforce the idea that if homosexuality is not a disorder or mental illness, there is no reason to pretend it can be cured, and anyone who tries is operating outside of mainstream science,” Drescher told Stateline.
– wrote the American Medical Association model law for state lawmakers who want to ban conversion therapy, it reflects a broad consensus in the medical community that homosexuality and gender nonconformity are not mental illnesses, RJ Mills, a representative of the American Medical Association, said in a statement to Stateline.
Drescher said that in the past, some leading psychiatric and psychological associations have been hesitant to support state restrictions because they viewed the regulations as an intrusion on the doctor-patient or therapist-patient relationship.
Everyone understands what is at stake now.
– Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst from New York whose research focuses on gender and sexuality
Now under the influence Trump administration policy that impose up-to-date restrictions on LGBTQ+ people and the most conservative The United States Supreme Court has been a medical organization for generations more and more vocal in his opposition to conversion therapy.
“The world has changed,” Drescher said. “Now everyone understands what is at stake.”
The free speech argument
Conservative law firms have filed lawsuits in states such as Colorado, Michigan AND Virginia on behalf of Christian counselors who claim that regulations prevent them from practicing their faith-based values. They argue that the bans should be repealed so that practitioners do not risk losing their careers for providing faith-based services.
Last month, a Virginia court oversaw a consent decree in which Virginia agreed not to fully enforce the 2020 conversion therapy ban and allowing counselors to engage in conversion therapy by talking to minors. The plaintiffs in the case were John and Janet Raymond, state-licensed professional counselors from Virginia represented by the Founding Freedoms Law Center, a conservative legal advocacy organization.
The type of talk therapy currently allowed can include talking, praying and sharing written materials such as religious scriptures, Josh Hetzler, the Raymonds’ attorney, said during a public news conference following the court’s decision.
“Thanks to this court order, every counselor in Virginia will now be able to speak freely, truthfully and honestly with clients who are willing to have critical conversations about their identity and hear faith-based insights from trusted professionals,” he said.
Conservative lawmakers also invoke their Christian faith in trying to end state bans.
Michigan Republican Josh Schriver filed a package of bills last month aimed at repealing several of what he calls, “the laws of the antichrist“incl Michigan’s 2023 ban on conversion therapy for adolescents.
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A legislative aide said Schriver did not attend the interview and instead referred Stateline to a recent Substack post he emailed to his constituents.
“As legislators, we have an obligation to eliminate laws that exceed the powers granted to us by our state and federal constitutions” – Schriver he said in the post.
Long, the Kentucky state minister, said the bans were needed because “nobody engages in conversion therapy voluntarily.”
“The only reason a child goes through this is because a trusted authority in his life – a parent, pastor or therapist – told him he is broken and needs to be fixed.”
At least five states have a law or policy prohibiting or deterring local ordinances intended to protect youth from conversion therapy.
Some states without such laws are going after municipalities that have banned conversion therapy.
Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sued Jackson County, Missouri, where Kansas City is located, in February, challenging the county’s 2023 ordinance and 2019 Kansas City ordinance that prohibit licensed counselors from engaging in conversion therapy with minors.
“Our children have the right to therapy that allows for honest, uninhibited conversation, free from transgender indoctrination,” Bailey said in a statement. statement in February. He called the regulations a “dangerous overreach” that violates the rights to free speech and religious freedom.
Republican loss
In at least one state, conservatives have run into a legal hurdle.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration has been trying since 2020 enact a statewide ban on conversion therapy proposed by the state agency that oversees provider licensing.
But there was a ban blocked twice by a Republican-controlled legislative committee.
The Evers administration sued.
Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with Evers, ruling that a state legislative committee had overstepped and could not block the rule.
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at: avollers@stateline.org.
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