Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has ordered Lawrence, Roeland Park and Prairie Village to repeal local bans on conversion therapy within 60 days, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling in Chiles v. Salazar. The scientific record is unchanged: major medical groups call conversion therapy harmful, and studies link it to dramatically higher suicide risk. Research also shows family rejection sharply increases suicide attempts while family acceptance is strongly protective. Those facts should be central to local decision-making before the deadline.
Kansas’ 60-Day Ultimatum On Conversion Therapy: The Law May Shift, But The Science Hasn’t
The Science on Conversion Therapy Hasn’t Changed, Even If Kansas’s Local Bans Might
This month Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sent three cities—Lawrence, Roeland Park and Prairie Village—a 60-day ultimatum to repeal local bans on conversion therapy. The legal push leans on the U.S. Supreme Court’s March decision in Chiles v. Salazar, in which an 8–1 majority held that Colorado’s ban on conversion “talk therapy” violated the First Amendment. Those legal developments have changed the regulatory landscape, but they do not change what decades of research have shown about the harms of conversion efforts.
What Conversion Therapy Is—and What the Medical Community Says
Conversion therapy refers to attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity—to make a gay child straight or a transgender child cisgender. Every major U.S. medical and mental-health organization opposes it, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and leading child and adolescent psychiatrists. These organizations conclude that conversion efforts are ineffective and can cause serious harm.
Evidence of Harm
The empirical evidence is consistent and striking. Research from The Trevor Project—based on a 2025 national survey of more than 16,000 young people—found that LGBTQ+ youth who were threatened with or subjected to conversion efforts were roughly three times as likely to attempt suicide in the past year. A 2020 study published in JAMA Psychiatry, drawing on nearly 28,000 transgender adults, found that those who recalled exposure to gender-identity conversion efforts had substantially higher odds of severe psychological distress and lifetime suicide attempts; the association was strongest when the exposure occurred in childhood.
Beyond suicide risk, clinicians and survivors report long-term consequences including depression, anxiety, substance use, post-traumatic stress and persistent shame and self-blame. These are not abstract statistics — they describe young people living in Kansas homes and communities.
How Family Response Matters
Conversion efforts often arrive framed as care: urged by parents, pastors or relatives who believe they are protecting a child. But that message—explicit or implicit—that a child is "broken" or must be fixed has measurable harms. Research from the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University found that LGBTQ+ young adults who faced high levels of family rejection in adolescence were 8.4 times more likely to have attempted suicide and nearly six times more likely to report severe depression than peers whose families showed acceptance.
The good news from the same research is that family acceptance is powerfully protective: supportive family responses sharply reduce the risk of depression, substance misuse and suicidal behavior. Family acceptance is one of the most effective, low-cost health interventions for LGBTQ+ youth.
Alternatives, Faith, And Community
Programs and resources such as Conversion Truth for Families, PFLAG, and the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists promote faith-consistent, affirming approaches for families who hold religious convictions. These groups argue parents do not have to choose between their faith and their child’s safety. By contrast, conversion therapy has often left survivors estranged from families and faith communities.
What’s At Stake Locally
The 60-day deadline is more than a legal technicality: it determines whether a Kansas teen who seeks help from a licensed counselor can be steered toward interventions that aim to change their sexual orientation or gender identity with local government approval. Courts will ultimately interpret what municipal bans can say, but city leaders, clergy, clinicians and families still shape day-to-day practice in neighborhoods and homes.
The research is consistent: conversion efforts increase the risk that vulnerable young people will attempt suicide; family acceptance reduces that risk. Those facts deserve a prominent place in local debate as the deadline approaches.
Kansans should have the scientific evidence and community resources clearly presented as they weigh these decisions over the coming weeks.
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