There are many possible reasons for a governor to issue an executive order. A law passed by the legislature may require it. A temporary emergency may require a rapid response to maintain order or preserve a constitutional system. New scientific revelations may require changes in laws previously passed. Or it could be pure politics.

In one recent case, only the last possibility holds true. Last Wednesday, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) unilaterally issued an executive order to ban “conversion therapy” for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, as The Washington Stand previously reported.

In practice, “The term has been inflated in recent years to include any approach to gender dysphoria in which the mental health professional does not immediately affirm the child’s stated gender identity,” notes National Review. Based on the way Beshear’s order is written, “Should the watchful waiting approach be interpreted as an effort to ‘change’ the child’s stated gender identity, the mental-health professional pursuing that approach could be in violation of the order.”

Beshear did not issue this executive order because state law required it. On the contrary, a bill to ban “conversion therapy” failed to pass the Republican-controlled legislature in 2023, so Beshear decided to “implement the ban himself by executive order,” noted National Review.

In fact, in 2023, the Kentucky legislature enacted a bill with the opposite effect. Over Beshear’s veto, the Kentucky legislature voted to protect minors from gender transition hormones and surgeries, finding that gender transitioning can cause permanent harm to young people before they have the maturity to make an informed choice. Together with a similar law from neighboring Tennessee, Kentucky’s law triumphed before the Sixth Circuit and will receive a final verdict from the Supreme Court next year. Notwithstanding his legislative defeat, Beshear’s executive order is an attempt to push young people into transgender identities anyway.

Beshear did not issue this executive order to resolve a temporary emergency or preserve his state’s constitutional order. No emergency was present here except the abrupt rise in trans-identifying youth, which Beshear’s order sought to accentuate. And far from preserving constitutional order, Beshear’s order constituted an end-run around the legislative process that would undermine free speech rights.

Beshear did not issue this executive order because recent scientific revelations demanded it. Granted, he boasted a scientific rationale, hiding behind the representative endorsements of large medical organizations. He claimed in a statement that “conversion therapy has no basis in medicine or science, and it has been shown to increase rates of suicide and depression.”

But the evidence tells a far different tale. According to a Manhattan Institute analysis, of 12.5-17.5-year-olds with gender dysphoria diagnoses in 2017, 45% still had the diagnosis in 2023. Similarly, a German analysis found that only 36% of those with gender dysphoria diagnoses in 2017 still had the diagnoses in 2022. These studies show that at least a majority — possibly a supermajority — of young people with gender dysphoria will abandon their transgender identity within five or so years. These young people come to embrace their natural bodies and avoid the negative side effects of a transgender identity (such as accompanying mental health issues and a lifelong reliance on cross-sex hormone injections).

The primary effect of Beshear’s “conversion therapy” ban would be to undercut these findings. The evidence shows that many young people abandon a transgender identity after a few years. Beshear’s order forbids counselors from helping young people abandon a transgender identity, even if they want to. This would have the effect of trapping young people in a transgender identity, from which hospitals and activist groups profit, simply because no one is allowed to help them re-establish a connection with their natural body.

That leaves one remaining rationale for Beshear’s executive order: pure politics. This executive order is a favor to political activist groups pushing a transgender agenda. In fact, the executive order relies heavily on statistics produced by one such activist group, the Trevor Project.

Having suffered legislative defeats in 2023 when the Kentucky legislature enacted protections for minors from gender transition procedures — but declined to ban “conversion therapy” — Beshear decided this year to co-opt the legislature’s authority with his executive pen.

In his March 24, 2023 message explaining his veto of the bill to protect minors from gender transition procedures, Beshear alleged that it “rips away the freedom of parents to make medical decisions for their children” and “strips freedom from parents to make personal family decisions on the names their children are called and how people should refer to them.” If he really cared about parental rights, the governor would not have turned around and issued an executive order that does exactly the same thing. Under his order, parents likely may not engage a therapist who practices watchful waiting, nor insist on medical personnel calling their children according to their given names.

This unprincipled reversal of parental rights is the strongest proof of all that the Kentucky governor’s executive order was motivated by pure politics.