WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The Biden White House on Thursday outlined a slate of new pro-LGBT initiatives “in celebration of Pride Month,” including strategies to directly promote radical gender ideology for children and encourage parents to “affirm” their child’s gender confusion.
The Biden administration made the announcement in a Thursday briefing detailing actions to “protect LGBTQI+ communities from attacks on their rights and safety [sic],” in reference to legislation enacted in conservative states to protect children from being exposed to sexualized content and subjected to mutilating and dangerous transgender surgeries and drugs.
Action items named in the briefing include a nearly $2 million grant for programs to help “families to affirm and support their LGBTQI+ child,” as well as the appointment of a new Department of Education coordinator to combat so-called “book bans” by Republican lawmakers seeking to cull sexually explicit and inappropriate content from school classrooms and libraries.
The Biden administration also seeks to ensure that gender-confused children in the foster care system are “affirmed” rather than guided to accept their true biological identities.
States, healthcare providers, families urged to ‘affirm’ kids who ‘identify’ as LGBT
The Thursday fact sheet released by the White House announced plans by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to issue pro-LGBT “guidance” for healthcare providers and help states use taxpayer dollars to “support mental health services for LGBTQI+ youth.”
The HHS is also set to “provide $1.7 million in federal funding for programs that prevent health and behavioral health risks for LGBTQI+ youth (including suicide and homelessness) by helping families to affirm and support their LGBTQI+ child.”
“LGBTQI+ youth face a nationwide mental health crisis, and almost half of LGBTQI+ kids say they seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year,” the fact sheet noted. “However, when LGBTQI+ kids are supported, they thrive.”
Proponents of LGBT ideology frequently claim without evidence that failure to “affirm” a child or adult’s gender confusion will lead to suicide.
A 2019 study by Richard Bränström, Ph.D., and John E. Pachankis, Ph.D., that appeared to support the theory that “gender-affirming care” improves mental health, for example, was later retracted, LifeSiteNews previously reported. A 2020 correction to that study found the “results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts in that comparison.”
Additionally, the Biden administration is targeting children in foster care, promising to help provide pro-LGBT placement and congregate care settings for LGBT-identifying minors who, the fact sheet asserted, are frequently “exposed to so-called ‘conversion therapy’” (a pejorative term frequently applied to any effort to help a person overcome dysfunctional gender perceptions or sexual desires).
Further, HHS Office for Civil Rights will “propose regulations to protect LGBTQI+ kids and families from discrimination in human services programs that support children and families.”
Roger Severino, former director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights and a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argued that the Biden administration “would rather have more kids stuck in foster care for longer than to allow faith-based groups to be a part of the solution,” Catholic Vote reported.
“This is divisive politics at its worst,” Severino said. “This administration continues to tear down conscience protections that ensure greater access to health and human services for everyone.”
Combatting so-called ‘book bans’ that work to remove inappropriate and sexually explicit materials from libraries and classrooms
The Biden administration also promised to “[s]hield LGBTQI+ Americans from book bans that threaten their rights by announcing that the Department of Education will appoint a new coordinator to address the growing threat that book bans pose for the civil rights of students.”
According to the fact sheet, the coordinator will help “provide new trainings for schools nationwide” concerning the bans on books promoting radical gender ideology and look into whether those bans “may violate federal civil rights laws.”
“Book banning erodes our democracy, removes vital resources for student learning, and can contribute to the stigma and isolation that LGBTQI+ people and other communities face,” the Biden administration asserted.
Claims of book banning concern the recent slate of measures by Republican lawmakers allowing greater parental involvement in curricular choices and removing inappropriate materials. Ongoing revelations concerning the extent of LGBT indoctrination and sexually explicit materials in public (and private) schools have galvanized parents, triggering a grassroots political movement to secure parental rights in the classroom to protect children and hold school districts accountable.
Pushing back against allegations of “book banning” and violations of free speech, conservatives have pointed out that the books targeted for removal, typically including books like “This Book is Gay” and “Gender Queer,” include graphic illustrations and descriptions of homosexual acts and even pedophilia.
“The illustrations in ‘Gender Queer’ are incredibly graphic and specific,” said Stacy Langton, founder of the pro-family Mama Grizzly movement, which seeks to protect children from inappropriate sexual material in school libraries, in an interview with Fox News.
“There’s an image of pedophilia, which is a boy that is engaged in a sex act with an adult male,” Langton said.
“And then there are very X-rated images of other sexual acts that can’t be broadcast on television,” she said. “So how is it not obscene?”
To date, 19 states have passed laws banning or restricting transgender surgeries and drugs for children. More than half a dozen states have passed measures to cull inappropriate materials from classrooms and libraries.