FRANKFORT, Ky. — A bill to ban conversion therapy was filed late Tuesday in the General Assembly. House Bill 162 would ban the practice statewide and is a bi-partisan bill, with Democratic Rep. Lisa Willner (D-Louisville) and Republican Rep. Killian Timoney (R-Lexington) co-sponsoring the bill.

What You Need To Know

  • House Bill 162 would prohibit all licensed mental health providers from engaging in any practices that purport to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity

  • Both national and state medical and health organization urge ending conversion therapy since it has proven to increase thoughts of suicide and self-harm

  • The Trevor Project’s 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that 13% of LGBTQ youth reported being subjected to conversion therapy, with 83% reporting it occurred when they were under age 18

  • Those subjected to conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report having attempted suicide and over 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year

The bill, called The Youth Mental Health Protection Act, would prohibit all licensed mental health providers from engaging in any practices that purport to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill would also prohibit any agency that provides these harmful practices or refers minors to them from receiving state funding.  

Wilner is also a licensed mental health professional, the only one currently serving in the Kentucky General Assembly.

“I’m grateful for the broad and diverse coalition that has come together to call for an end to the too-often deadly practice of conversion ‘therapy.’ A license to provide mental health services ought to be, at the bare minimum, a guarantee to the public that the provider is not engaging in discredited and dangerous practices,” said Wilner.

In a statement from the Kentucky Coalition for Healthy Children, conversion therapy is the “practice of harmful interventions that seek to ‘cure’ or suppress the sexual orientation and/or gender identity of a person.”

They say the practice has been proven to increase rates of suicide and other self-harming behaviors, decrease a sense of self-esteem, as well as negatively impact school attendance and academic performance.

The Trevor Project’s 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that 13% of LGBTQ youth reported being subjected to conversion therapy, with 83% reporting it occurred when they were under age 18. It also found that LGBTQ youth who underwent conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report having attempted suicide and over 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year.

In a more recent study published in May 2022 in JAMA Pediatrics, multinational research found that found the practice of conversion therapy on LGBTQ youth, and its associated effects, cost the United States an estimated $9.23 billion annually and untold harm to thousands of LGBTQ youth.

Rebecca Blankenship, who serves as executive director of Ban Conversion Therapy Kentucky, celebrated the bill’s introduction telling Spectrum News 1, “It continues to give hope to LGBT people in the commonwealth — that kids will not be lied to and manipulated by medical professionals.”

While heralding the effort, Blankenship is concerned about another bill — House Bill 177 — that would still allow conversion therapy in the state.

“We are gravely concerned about that bill. One of the things we interpret it to do would be to explicitly allow conversion therapy statewide if that is what the parent wants,” she explained. “That would open parents and children up to extreme levels of exploitation and danger.”

Both HB 162 and HB 177 have been filed and introduced to the House Committee on Committees.

The practice of conversion therapy has been banned in Kentucky's three largest cities — Louisville, Lexington and Covington.

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