Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
Gov. Andy Beshear plans to veto a bill that would undo his executive order restricting conversion therapy in Kentucky, should it pass the legislature and reach his desk.
He made the promise at the 2025 Fairness Rally, held in the Capitol rotunda Tuesday. Beshear, who made history in 2020 as the first sitting governor to attend a fairness rally, called conversion therapy “torture.”
“It has been discredited, and it should not be happening in the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” Beshear said, to cheers from the crowd gathered. The Republican-controlled legislature has the votes to easily overturn any veto.
Conversion therapy is a discredited practice that attempts to alter a person’s sexuality. Specifically, it attempts to alter gender expression and sexual attraction that diverges from heterosexual normativity, “with the specific aim to promote heterosexuality as a preferable outcome,” according to the The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.”
In 2024, Beshear signed an executive order aimed at ending the practice on Kentucky minors. Speaking Tuesday, he touted his record on LGBTQ+ issues, including vetoing the 2023 Senate Bill 150, which banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. He called the legislation, which became law despite his veto, “the nastiest piece of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that this state had ever seen.”
“I know a lot of people are scared right now about what the president is going to do next, and your rights being in danger,” Beshear said. “To our LGBTQ Kentuckians, we’re here for you. We see you, we love you and we support you.”
When introducing Beshear, Chris Hartman, the executive director for the Fairness Campaign, praised him for appearing at every Fairness Rally since becoming governor.
“He’s the most pro-equality governor in the history of the commonwealth of Kentucky and if we are lucky, he just might be the most pro-equality president,” Hartman said.
The crowd cheered and chanted “Andy, Andy, Andy” to this.
Beshear was joined by a slate of Democratic politicians, lawmakers and advocates who criticized other bills they said are discriminatory toward the LGBTQ+ community and called on more LGBTQ+ people to run for office. Speakers included Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, Senate Minority Leader Gerald Neal, Senate Minority Caucus Chair Reggie Thomas, Lexington Councilwoman Emma Curtis, Rep. Lisa Willner, D-Louisville, and others.
In addition to the conversion therapy bill, the Fairness Campaign opposes Senate Bill 2, a high-priority bill that would bar the use of public funds to offer gender-affirming care to transgender inmates in Kentucky, affecting about 67 people.
Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, said those in support of legislation to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public institutions “are trying to figure out who they do not want in their society” and “trying to legislate a way to keep you out.”
“These people who are writing … these bills, trying to get them passed through our Senate, are bigots. They are racists, they are homophobic and they are misogynists,” said Berg, who lost her transgender son in 2022 to suicide. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 988.
“But we do not give up. We do not give in. We keep marching. We keep showing up, we keep being proud of who we are, because that is what God wants us to do,” Berg added.
Sen. Keturah Herron, D-Louisville, lamented the anti-DEI bill making its way through the legislature, saying a few hours after the rally she would have to “go debate something that should not even be on the table.”
“This work is difficult. It’s hard,” added Herron, Kentucky’s first openly LGBTQ+ female senator. “This is our civil rights movement. This is our time to show up. This is our time to organize. This is our time to stand together.”
Rep. Adrielle Camuel, D-Lexington, said the DEI and conversion therapy bills are “designed to be cruel” and “to inflict harm and to put people in a box or to put them back in their place.”
“These measures don’t just threaten policies. They threaten people — real lives, real families,” said Camuel. “The anti-diversity, equity and inclusion bill isn’t just an attack on programs. It’s an attempt to erase the beautiful diversity that makes our community strong. And the conversion therapy bill, it is an attempt to make you hide your true self, the very thing that makes you and our commonwealth so very special.”
Carma Bell Marshall, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2024 and was the first Black openly transgender person to run, said “change is slow, but it is inevitable, because the truth is on our side” and “humanity is on our side.”
“Right now, in Kentucky and across this country, we are witnessing attacks on trans lives in the form of cruel legislation, policies designed to erase, to silence, to make us feel small,” said Marshall. “But let me tell you something: we are not small, we are not weak and we will not be erased.”
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
