Beshear vetoes conversion therapy bill
At the 2025 Fairness Rally, Gov. Andy Beshear promised to veto a bill that's meant to cancel his restrictions on conversion therapy. The rally is photographed from the vantage of the Abraham Lincoln statue's boot, March 11, 2025. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)
Fulfilling a promise he made at this year's Fairness Rally, Gov. Andy Beshear has vetoed a bill that would cancel his administration's restrictions on conversion therapy and prohibit Medicaid from covering transgender-affirming medical care.
The Republican-controlled legislature reconvenes on Thursday for the last two days of the 2025 legislative session, at which time lawmakers can easily override Beshear's veto.
In his veto letter, Beshear called House Bill 495 an 'unconstitutional infringement' that 'promotes a dangerous and discriminatory practice that has led to the deaths of Kentucky children.'
Conversion therapy is a discredited practice that 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.
'Conversion therapy has no basis in medicine or science and causes significant long term damage to our kids, including increased rates of suicide, anxiety and depression,' he wrote in his veto message on HB 495. 'As leaders and policy makers, we should be in the business of protecting our citizens and kids from harm, not subjecting them to discredited methods that jeopardize their health, well being and safety.'
Beshear's veto message did not mention the bill's ban on Medicaid covering gender-affirming medical care.
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