By Anna Claire Vollers

Stateline

Week after week, a teenage Brandon Long sat through counseling sessions that he said framed his identity as a failure.

Now an ordained minister in Northern Kentucky, Long told Kentucky state lawmakers about the years he spent undergoing therapy designed to rid him of his “same-sex attraction.”

“Just imagine yourself being told, session after session, that if you remained as you were, you would be rejected,” he said.

Long testified in February before a Kentucky House committee against a Republican-sponsored bill that would cancel Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s 2024 executive order that banned a controversial practice known as “conversion therapy” for minors.

Conversion therapy is a catchall term for controversial efforts to change the sexual orient

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