Biden Administration Launches New Policies to Keep LGBTQ Individuals ‘Safe’ and Ensure Children Are ‘Affirmed’ in Their Gender Identity

Susan Berry, PhD

The Biden administration announced new “actions” Thursday centered on ensuring LGBTQ individuals are protected from perceived “attacks on their rights and safety,” including state laws that protect children and teens from a predatory transgender medical industry.

The announcement of the “new actions,” the Biden administration said, is made “in celebration of Pride Month.”

“Federal agencies,” the “fact sheet” of the new policies states, will be directing efforts to implement the actions which include:

New “LGBTQI+ Community Safety Partnership”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division will serve as “liaison” to protect the LGBTQI+ community from attacks on “their rights and safety,” the document says.

New Federal Initiative with Funding for Programs That “Help Parents Affirm Their LGBTQI+ Kids.”

According to the “fact sheet,” the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will work to “support the mental health of LGBTQI+ youth and partner with families to affirm LGBTQI+ kids.”

“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 Biden administration acknowledges, but then implies that when these gender confused young people are affirmed in their new gender identity, “they thrive.”

In a study published in March 2022 in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, Dr. Stephen B. Levine and his colleagues found the transgender industry’s “transition or die” youth suicide narrative to be “factually inaccurate and ethically fraught.”

“The ‘transition or die’ narrative regards suicidal risk in trans-identified youth as a different phenomenon than suicidal risk among other youth,” Levine and his colleagues noted. “Making them an exception falsely promises the parents that immediate transition will remove the risk of suicidal self-harm.”

“Disseminating such alarmist messages hurts the majority of trans-identified youth who are not at risk for suicide,” Levine et al concluded. “It also hurts the minority who are at risk, and who, as a result of such misinformation, may forgo evidence-based suicide prevention interventions in the false hopes that transition will prevent suicide.”

New Coordinator “To Address the Growing Threat That Book Bans Pose for the Civil Rights of Students.”

In May, Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Jay P. Greene, Ph.D. observed that the book-banning narrative of the radical left is “false.”

PEN America, which advocates for poets, essayists, and novelists, Greene noted, claimed 2,532 books were eliminated from schools during the 2021-2022 academic year:

We know this is false because we examined online card catalogues and found that 74% of the books PEN America identified as banned from school libraries are actually listed as available in the catalogues of those school districts. In many cases we could see that copies of those books are currently checked out and in use by students.

PEN America declared classics such as Anne Frank’s Diary, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, and others were all banned.

“In every school district in which PEN America alleges those books were banned, we found copies listed as available in the online card catalogue,” Greene wrote and then addressed the issue of books with sexually explicit material that is inappropriate for children:

[M]any of the books we were unable to find in card catalogues were works that would strike most reasonable people as unlikely to be age-appropriate for school libraries. Works like “Gender Queer,” “Flamer,” “Lawn Boy,” “Fun Home,” and “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health” either contain images of people engaged in sex acts or graphic descriptions of those acts.

“People who don’t want these books available to children in school libraries aren’t book banners,” Greene asserted. “And people unwilling to defer to the unilateral authority of teachers and librarians to decide what children should have access to without democratic oversight or parental input are not fascists.”

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights coordinator “will work to provide new trainings for schools nationwide on how book bans that target specific communities and create a hostile school environment may violate federal civil rights laws,” the fact sheet explains.

The left’s celebration of “pride month” began with a “proclamation” by the White House that makes a point of condemning states that have passed “hateful” laws protecting children and teens from experimental transgender drugs, body-mutilating gender transition surgeries, and potential psychological damage from exposure to inappropriate books with explicit sexual imagery and exhibitions by sexually provocative drag queen performers:

In 2023 alone, State and local legislatures have already introduced over 600 hateful laws targeting the LGBTQI+ community. Books about LGBTQI+ people are being banned from libraries. Transgender youth in over a dozen States have had their medically necessary health care banned. Homophobic and transphobic vitriol spewed online has spilled over into real life, as armed hate groups intimidate people at Pride marches and drag performances, and threaten doctors’ offices and children’s hospitals that offer care to the LGBTQI+ community. Our hearts are heavy with grief for the loved ones we have lost to anti-LGBTQI+ violence.

In the proclamation, Biden praised the “LGBTQI+ community” for remaining “resilient” and “defiantly and unapologetically proud,” and applauded “youth leaders” for “organizing walkouts at high schools and colleges across the country” to protest what it refers to as “discriminatory laws.”

In order to further embed the LGBTQ political agenda in American life, Biden said he has “appointed a historic number of highly qualified openly LGBTQI+ judges and public servants at all levels of the Federal Government.”

“Our Armed Forces are most capable when all patriots can serve their country, so I protected the right of transgender people to once again serve openly in the military,” Biden touted.

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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Pride Flags at The White House” by President Biden.

 

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