Kentucky's strong anti-discrimination laws are in place following decades of advocacy work by the Fairness Campaign. Its executive director Chris Hartman visited 840WHAS to discuss the recent Kentucky state legislature's override of Gov. Andy Beshear's support of trans medical care and his aversion to the concept of conversion therapy.
We also discussed online discussions of whether the LGB community should separate from the TQ+ advocacy messaging that roils a significant segment of society.
We also discussed online discussions of whether the LGB community should separate from the TQ+ advocacy messaging that roils a significant segment of society.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stay safe as always. When it was a rough night
last night, there's gonna be more shower tiviot. In fact,
I think it's raining a little bit in downtown Louisville
right now, sixty degrees. We'll talk to the WLKY weather
team in a few minutes. Chris Hartman is back in
the studio, a friend of mine from my neighborhood. It's true,
Executive director of Fairness Campaign. Always great to see you friend.
I love seeing you, Terry. Why did you get younger
(00:22):
every time I see you? And I'm older?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
He say?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Gee, he just took a great photo of the both
of the two of us. We'll post it all good too.
But you're looking like a high school that's very sweet
of view. I didn't look like a high school kid
in high school. Are you saying more of your Catholic
prayers than I am? Is that what it is?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I went to a full Catholic funeral about a week ago,
so I'm all caught up on my indulgences.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I think was that an hour and fifteen minutes? Sometimes
it depends.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Well, you had to light the endcense. We didn't get
sprinkled this.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Time, but well, yeah, you get that sometimes it's holy
water sprinkling, and you got to remember it's lent. You know,
That's why the things are longer as that goes. Chris,
I always like to bring you in after the State
Legislature finishes a session because oftentimes you were there, You're
you're in, and you're being heard in Frankfurt. Am I
(01:14):
being heard? Well? You are. You're one of the prominent
voices in this Commonwealth. And I want to ask you
about a couple specific bills that came through because we
know the legislature passes certain bills. Governor basher then veto's them.
The legislature comes back in its final couple of days
and overrides many of those vetos. One had to do
with conversion therapy. So I like to see and hear
(01:37):
your perspective on what exactly transpired.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, and Terry, that one's proof that I'm not being
heard at all. I've never been gabbled out of orders
so many times in a committee hearing than I was
over this bill that you're talking about. This was House
Bill four ninety five, okay, and this was to deal
with the fact that Governor Andy Basheer, working with US,
banned conversion therapy be last summer by executive order, if.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You mind taking them out and explaining to people what
it is. Yeah, a lot of folks may not know
what conversion therapy is. It's it's when you send usually
an LGBTQ young person a child to They call it therapy,
but I mean, really it's torture, is what it is,
to try to convince them that they don't have to
be LGBTQ any longer. That's just to pray the gay
(02:25):
away or to train someone to say you're not really gay.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Right, and we know that.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
You know, what do you think the success rate of
that is, Terry, I'm going to go less than five
popping zero percent just about. We know that not only
does it not work, but what happens is that it
causes an increase in depression, in self harm, in isolation,
and unfortunately, in suicidal ideation and a lot of times suicide.
(02:52):
Kids who are subjected to conversion therapy are twice as
likely to attempt suicide as LGBTQ kids who are aren't.
So I say, you know this isn't just snake oil,
because if it were just a placebo you sent a
kid somewhere, nothing happened, they come home, that's it.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
That would be fine. But the reality is that it's
not just snake oil, it's snake venom. Because it only
has this negative effect, it's really medical malpractice. And so
House Bill four ninety five what the legislature ended up
doing was overturning Governor Basher's executive order that banned conversion therapy.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So we're basically.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Back to where we were before last summer, back to
sort of status quo where it's a little unclear can
conversion therapist practice in the state. I would argue that
licensure boards could probably still discipline them if they were
to engage in what's called conversion therapy.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Is it a money making thing too? Is this another
way for somebody to say this is my specialty and
ching ching chang king, there's money.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And I tell you, we narrowly avoided a situation where
folks who would fleece parents out of tens of thousands
of dollars like that would have been encouraged to come
to the state with the original language in House Bill
four ninety five. So you know, this is what happens
in the legislature. In frankfort a Bill gets introduced, and
the language that is there when it starts is definitely
(04:18):
not always the language that's there when the bill passes
the finish line. And so originally House Bill four ninety
five would have explicitly legalized conversion therapy on LGBTQ youth
and really would have encouraged conversion therapists to come into Kentucky,
to engage in this medical malpractice and to make tens
(04:38):
hundreds of thousands of dollars off of subjecting kids to
what really is essentially torture. And I didn't coin that phrase.
Former Republican State Senator Alice forgh Kerr Out of Lexington
is the one that led the effort to ban conversion
therapy in Kentucky and called it conversion torture herself.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I remember that.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The situation is some parents think, well, maybe my child
needs some new voice in their head and it's going
to teach them a different lifestyle. But a person is
who they are, right And I tell you, you know,
therapy is great, Therapy is encouraged. Everybody should of course
seek therapy if you feel that you need it. But
(05:19):
this is just not therapy.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And you know what I'll say too, is that regardless
of what the governor did, regardless of any laws that
could passed in the legislature, pastors ministers have every right
to engage in whatever kind of therapeutic speech that they
want to engage in. But what we are talking about
specifically is license clinical therapists. There is no case in
(05:44):
which a license clinical therapist should be engaging in conversion therapy.
That's what the governor's executive order was about. That's what
the bill that we try to pass every year in
the legislature is about, just making certain that if you're
a licensed healthcare professional and you're taking your to a
licensed healthcare professional, that they're not going to be subjected
to something that is only going.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
To harm them.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
My nephew, Zach Miners, created a movie that was very
eye opening, very instructive for many of us in our
family right conversion, and you know, I think he's presented
a really strong case as to the danger that is
involved in conversion therapy, and it's very eye opening and
(06:26):
streaming on various services. You just kind of listen to
people who have been through it. You will not talk
to a single survivor of conversion therapy that say that
it helped them in any way, shape or form. The
reality is that it takes years, a lifetime of real
therapy to unravel the harm that gets done in a
situation like conversion therapy. And as you and I were
(06:47):
talking too, unfortunately, the bill wasn't just about conversion therapy.
At the very end of the legislative session, because this
is how things go in Frankfort, they slipped in an
anti transgender measure as well to block state Medicaid from
reimbursing any cost associated with transgender health care. And that's
going to cut off thousands of Kentuckians, five to ten
(07:09):
thousand transgender Kentuckians who are our most vulnerable Kentuckians, going
to cut them off from the care that is medically
necessary that they've been prescribed. We talked about puberty blockers
and these issues.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Well, no, this is for adults really, so we're really
talking mostly just about hormone replacement therapy, which is not
a very expensive monthly therapy. But for folks who are
on state medicaid, these are folks who are living at
poverty level oftentimes or who need state assistance. And so
even to block the reimbursement for that one medication for
(07:42):
these folks is going to be devastating. Now here's the
silver lining for us, though the legislature is very upset
about it, is that Governor Basher has said that there's
a cost associated with cutting folks off of their medication.
It's going to take increased hours of mental health care
to take increased other prescriptions to help folks deal with
(08:04):
the crisis that they face if they've been cut off
from their health care. And so Governor Basher said, this
is an unfunded mandate and without the legislature creating an
appropriation to cover the costs that are going to be
associated with this, he said he's not going to enforce
that law and the other laws that have been passed
to deal with state medicaid.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So does that go over to the Attorney General's office
then about enforcing laws.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
We will see what happened. I think we're going to
see what happens.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I would imagine the legislature en have come back the
next time and see if they can fall well. I mean, certainly,
if Governor Basher takes this action, doesn't enforce Housepill four
ninety five, Housepill six ninety five, which had the work
requirements for state medicaid. If he goes through with this,
I imagine that the legislature may take him to court
(08:52):
over it, may seek you know, the Attorney General to intervene.
But I think that you are right.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
What we're going to see is that they'll just come
back next year when it's a budget year, and they'll
certainly make some corrections. But this means that transgender Kentuckians
and many other folks can probably continue their healthcare through
the rest of this year if Governor Misheer follows through
on that promise.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
We're speaking and Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign.
I see more people online now, Chris that are gay
and lesbian folks who will say LGB really shouldn't be
married up with t Q. Plus what I just want
to get your take on that when you hear people
(09:36):
say we're living our lives and there's so much drama
and controversy that's going with the t particularly, So what's
your take on that as a Fairness campaign?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, I mean our trans community is under attack right
now in unprecedented ways. My twenty nearly you know, fifteen
sixteen years at the Fairness Campaign, I have not seen
it this bad. And again they're coming for our trans
community first right now, because that's the smallest and arguably
most vulnerable community to attack. And this has always been
(10:10):
the strategy of the other side, is to divide the community.
Once you start dividing the community, driving wedges within marginalized
communities and separating those out, it's easier to pick off
this group, and then to pick off that group and
pick off this group. Which is why at the Fairness
Campaign we have never moved forward with anything without everyone.
(10:31):
Back in nineteen ninety nine, when the Fairness Campaign was
working to pass Kentucky's first anti discrimination fairness ordinance here
in Louisville, there were lots of folks who said, you
should just pass a discrimination law that protects lesbian, gay,
and bisexual folks and come back later for transgender folks. Well,
how often does the bus come back to pick up
(10:51):
the folks who never got on it.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It doesn't.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
And so the Fairness Campaign to their credit and look,
I wasn't around at that point in time, this before
I came, but this is how we've done the work
ever since then. Fairness campaigns said absolutely not, We're not
going to pass a fairness ordinance unless it includes everyone.
Regardless of what people are saying, including national LGBTQ groups
across the country, we're saying at that point, just get
(11:14):
what you can right now, just you know, come back
for the transgender issue later.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Fairness wouldn't do it. And I'm proud to say that
every one of the twenty four fairness ordinances across the
Commonwealth of Kentucky, including in the tiny small towns like
Vico and Appalachia Morehead, all of the communities that have
passed and LGBTQ fairness ordinance have included transgender people. We've
got to be in this fight together because if they're
(11:41):
not coming for us today, but they're coming for my neighbor,
they're coming for me tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
You know that that's true.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Chris Hartman, always great to see you, neighbor, Terry.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I appreciate you more than you know.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I love you more than you love you. We're neighbors forever.
All right, We're going right back on news radio. Wait
forty whas
Stay safe as always. When it was a rough night
last night, there's gonna be more shower tiviot. In fact,
I think it's raining a little bit in downtown Louisville
right now, sixty degrees. We'll talk to the WLKY weather
team in a few minutes. Chris Hartman is back in
the studio, a friend of mine from my neighborhood. It's true,
Executive director of Fairness Campaign. Always great to see you friend.
I love seeing you, Terry. Why did you get younger
(00:22):
every time I see you? And I'm older?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
He say?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Gee, he just took a great photo of the both
of the two of us. We'll post it all good too.
But you're looking like a high school that's very sweet
of view. I didn't look like a high school kid
in high school. Are you saying more of your Catholic
prayers than I am? Is that what it is?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I went to a full Catholic funeral about a week ago,
so I'm all caught up on my indulgences.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I think was that an hour and fifteen minutes? Sometimes
it depends.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Well, you had to light the endcense. We didn't get
sprinkled this.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Time, but well, yeah, you get that sometimes it's holy
water sprinkling, and you got to remember it's lent. You know,
That's why the things are longer as that goes. Chris,
I always like to bring you in after the State
Legislature finishes a session because oftentimes you were there, You're
you're in, and you're being heard in Frankfurt. Am I
(01:14):
being heard? Well? You are. You're one of the prominent
voices in this Commonwealth. And I want to ask you
about a couple specific bills that came through because we
know the legislature passes certain bills. Governor basher then veto's them.
The legislature comes back in its final couple of days
and overrides many of those vetos. One had to do
with conversion therapy. So I like to see and hear
(01:37):
your perspective on what exactly transpired.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, and Terry, that one's proof that I'm not being
heard at all. I've never been gabbled out of orders
so many times in a committee hearing than I was
over this bill that you're talking about. This was House
Bill four ninety five, okay, and this was to deal
with the fact that Governor Andy Basheer, working with US,
banned conversion therapy be last summer by executive order, if.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You mind taking them out and explaining to people what
it is. Yeah, a lot of folks may not know
what conversion therapy is. It's it's when you send usually
an LGBTQ young person a child to They call it therapy,
but I mean, really it's torture, is what it is,
to try to convince them that they don't have to
be LGBTQ any longer. That's just to pray the gay
(02:25):
away or to train someone to say you're not really gay.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Right, and we know that.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
You know, what do you think the success rate of
that is, Terry, I'm going to go less than five
popping zero percent just about. We know that not only
does it not work, but what happens is that it
causes an increase in depression, in self harm, in isolation,
and unfortunately, in suicidal ideation and a lot of times suicide.
(02:52):
Kids who are subjected to conversion therapy are twice as
likely to attempt suicide as LGBTQ kids who are aren't.
So I say, you know this isn't just snake oil,
because if it were just a placebo you sent a
kid somewhere, nothing happened, they come home, that's it.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
That would be fine. But the reality is that it's
not just snake oil, it's snake venom. Because it only
has this negative effect, it's really medical malpractice. And so
House Bill four ninety five what the legislature ended up
doing was overturning Governor Basher's executive order that banned conversion therapy.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So we're basically.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Back to where we were before last summer, back to
sort of status quo where it's a little unclear can
conversion therapist practice in the state. I would argue that
licensure boards could probably still discipline them if they were
to engage in what's called conversion therapy.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Is it a money making thing too? Is this another
way for somebody to say this is my specialty and
ching ching chang king, there's money.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And I tell you, we narrowly avoided a situation where
folks who would fleece parents out of tens of thousands
of dollars like that would have been encouraged to come
to the state with the original language in House Bill
four ninety five. So you know, this is what happens
in the legislature. In frankfort a Bill gets introduced, and
the language that is there when it starts is definitely
(04:18):
not always the language that's there when the bill passes
the finish line. And so originally House Bill four ninety
five would have explicitly legalized conversion therapy on LGBTQ youth
and really would have encouraged conversion therapists to come into Kentucky,
to engage in this medical malpractice and to make tens
(04:38):
hundreds of thousands of dollars off of subjecting kids to
what really is essentially torture. And I didn't coin that phrase.
Former Republican State Senator Alice forgh Kerr Out of Lexington
is the one that led the effort to ban conversion
therapy in Kentucky and called it conversion torture herself.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I remember that.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The situation is some parents think, well, maybe my child
needs some new voice in their head and it's going
to teach them a different lifestyle. But a person is
who they are, right And I tell you, you know,
therapy is great, Therapy is encouraged. Everybody should of course
seek therapy if you feel that you need it. But
(05:19):
this is just not therapy.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And you know what I'll say too, is that regardless
of what the governor did, regardless of any laws that
could passed in the legislature, pastors ministers have every right
to engage in whatever kind of therapeutic speech that they
want to engage in. But what we are talking about
specifically is license clinical therapists. There is no case in
(05:44):
which a license clinical therapist should be engaging in conversion therapy.
That's what the governor's executive order was about. That's what
the bill that we try to pass every year in
the legislature is about, just making certain that if you're
a licensed healthcare professional and you're taking your to a
licensed healthcare professional, that they're not going to be subjected
to something that is only going.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
To harm them.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
My nephew, Zach Miners, created a movie that was very
eye opening, very instructive for many of us in our
family right conversion, and you know, I think he's presented
a really strong case as to the danger that is
involved in conversion therapy, and it's very eye opening and
(06:26):
streaming on various services. You just kind of listen to
people who have been through it. You will not talk
to a single survivor of conversion therapy that say that
it helped them in any way, shape or form. The
reality is that it takes years, a lifetime of real
therapy to unravel the harm that gets done in a
situation like conversion therapy. And as you and I were
(06:47):
talking too, unfortunately, the bill wasn't just about conversion therapy.
At the very end of the legislative session, because this
is how things go in Frankfort, they slipped in an
anti transgender measure as well to block state Medicaid from
reimbursing any cost associated with transgender health care. And that's
going to cut off thousands of Kentuckians, five to ten
(07:09):
thousand transgender Kentuckians who are our most vulnerable Kentuckians, going
to cut them off from the care that is medically
necessary that they've been prescribed. We talked about puberty blockers
and these issues.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Well, no, this is for adults really, so we're really
talking mostly just about hormone replacement therapy, which is not
a very expensive monthly therapy. But for folks who are
on state medicaid, these are folks who are living at
poverty level oftentimes or who need state assistance. And so
even to block the reimbursement for that one medication for
(07:42):
these folks is going to be devastating. Now here's the
silver lining for us, though the legislature is very upset
about it, is that Governor Basher has said that there's
a cost associated with cutting folks off of their medication.
It's going to take increased hours of mental health care
to take increased other prescriptions to help folks deal with
(08:04):
the crisis that they face if they've been cut off
from their health care. And so Governor Basher said, this
is an unfunded mandate and without the legislature creating an
appropriation to cover the costs that are going to be
associated with this, he said he's not going to enforce
that law and the other laws that have been passed
to deal with state medicaid.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So does that go over to the Attorney General's office
then about enforcing laws.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
We will see what happened. I think we're going to
see what happens.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I would imagine the legislature en have come back the
next time and see if they can fall well. I mean, certainly,
if Governor Basher takes this action, doesn't enforce Housepill four
ninety five, Housepill six ninety five, which had the work
requirements for state medicaid. If he goes through with this,
I imagine that the legislature may take him to court
(08:52):
over it, may seek you know, the Attorney General to intervene.
But I think that you are right.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
What we're going to see is that they'll just come
back next year when it's a budget year, and they'll
certainly make some corrections. But this means that transgender Kentuckians
and many other folks can probably continue their healthcare through
the rest of this year if Governor Misheer follows through
on that promise.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
We're speaking and Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign.
I see more people online now, Chris that are gay
and lesbian folks who will say LGB really shouldn't be
married up with t Q. Plus what I just want
to get your take on that when you hear people
(09:36):
say we're living our lives and there's so much drama
and controversy that's going with the t particularly, So what's
your take on that as a Fairness campaign?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, I mean our trans community is under attack right
now in unprecedented ways. My twenty nearly you know, fifteen
sixteen years at the Fairness Campaign, I have not seen
it this bad. And again they're coming for our trans
community first right now, because that's the smallest and arguably
most vulnerable community to attack. And this has always been
(10:10):
the strategy of the other side, is to divide the community.
Once you start dividing the community, driving wedges within marginalized
communities and separating those out, it's easier to pick off
this group, and then to pick off that group and
pick off this group. Which is why at the Fairness
Campaign we have never moved forward with anything without everyone.
(10:31):
Back in nineteen ninety nine, when the Fairness Campaign was
working to pass Kentucky's first anti discrimination fairness ordinance here
in Louisville, there were lots of folks who said, you
should just pass a discrimination law that protects lesbian, gay,
and bisexual folks and come back later for transgender folks. Well,
how often does the bus come back to pick up
(10:51):
the folks who never got on it.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It doesn't.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
And so the Fairness Campaign to their credit and look,
I wasn't around at that point in time, this before
I came, but this is how we've done the work
ever since then. Fairness campaigns said absolutely not, We're not
going to pass a fairness ordinance unless it includes everyone.
Regardless of what people are saying, including national LGBTQ groups
across the country, we're saying at that point, just get
(11:14):
what you can right now, just you know, come back
for the transgender issue later.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Fairness wouldn't do it. And I'm proud to say that
every one of the twenty four fairness ordinances across the
Commonwealth of Kentucky, including in the tiny small towns like
Vico and Appalachia Morehead, all of the communities that have
passed and LGBTQ fairness ordinance have included transgender people. We've
got to be in this fight together because if they're
(11:41):
not coming for us today, but they're coming for my neighbor,
they're coming for me tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
You know that that's true.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Chris Hartman, always great to see you, neighbor, Terry.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I appreciate you more than you know.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I love you more than you love you. We're neighbors forever.
All right, We're going right back on news radio. Wait
forty whas
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