FRANKFORT, Ky. (BP) — Hershael York was one of the invited speakers to a news conference organized by Kentucky’s Commonwealth Policy Center Friday (Sept. 20) as a rebuttal to Gov. Andy Beshear’s recent executive order banning so-called conversion therapy.

York, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, addressed what it means to be made in the image of God and to love your neighbor.

Beshear is known for invoking his Christian faith when making decisions, and he did so again last week when announcing the executive order.

“My faith teaches me that all children are children of God,” Beshear said during the signing ceremony at the Kentucky Capitol. “And where practices are endangering and even harming those children, we must act. The practice of so-called ‘conversion therapy’ hurts our children.”

York, a Kentucky Baptist who recently retired as pastor of Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Ky., responded with Scripture.

“By his invitation to examine his faith, I’m going to respond,” York said. “He talked about what his faith informs him. I believe he’s member of a church that calls itself Disciples of Christ. I simply want to point out the way Jesus dealt with issues like this.

“In Matthew 19, one day some Pharisees came to Jesus with questions about marriage and divorce. They asked Him what’s appropriate and is it lawful to divorce their wife for any reason. Jesus’ response was to go back to the very beginning. In the beginning, God created them male and female, and then went on to talk about marriage, who’s in the marriage, how long the marriage lasts, the purpose of marriage. But He did it by going back to the beginning.

“When Gov. Beshear himself said, ‘We are created in the image of God,’ I simply want to say what did Jesus have to say about that? He said we are created in the image of God as gendered persons: in the beginning He created them, male and female.”

York then constructed a scenario to consider.

“Now let’s imagine that Jesus is counseling a minor in the state of Kentucky that comes to Him and says, ‘I’m very confused about my gender. I have certain feelings I don’t know. Do I belong in this body? Is my body my enemy?’ If Jesus used the same hermeneutics He used with the Pharisees that day, that would put Him outside the governor’s executive order. And it makes no sense that the governor would invoke a faith that is contrary to the one whose name is given to that faith.”

York added, “We are Christians. We are followers of Christ. Christ spoke clearly about that. So, to love my neighbor is to speak the truth.”

He closed with a message about lostness and how everyone is a broken vessel, but the gospel brings hope and healing.

“By the way, we should not be afraid of this word ‘conversion.’ Christians believe in conversion. We believe we’re all broken, we’re all confused, we’re all wounded in our lostness. It is the wonderful healing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ that brings us wholeness.

“And to say we can’t talk to someone, that there’s some category of brokenness there we can’t address, there’s some category of lostness or confusion we can’t counsel, is to absolutely undermine the very tenet of the Christian faith that we all desperately need to be converted.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Mark Maynard is managing editor of Kentucky Today, the news website of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. This story originally appeared in Kentucky Today.)