by Owen Klinsky
The Biden-Harris administration has granted millions of dollars in funding for a virtual treatment that aims to help cure eating disorders by “affirming” LGBTQIA+ patients’ sexual orientation and gender claims.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Auburn University Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences Tiffany Brown and San Diego State University Professor of Psychology Aaron Blashill up to $5 million in grants to “develop and provide” the Promoting Resilience to Improve Disordered Eating (PRIDE) treatment — a virtual “identity-affirming eating disorder treatment for LGBTQIA+ patients,” the Auburn University College of Liberal Arts website states. The PRIDE initiative is undergirded by the idea that “identity-related stress” is an “underlying motivator of disordered eating,” and thus that “affirm[ing] and support[ing]” patients’ beliefs that they are LGBTQIA+ can help cure eating disorders.
“Even when available, many LGBTQIA+ people across the country feel uncomfortable accessing treatment, for fear of discrimination or lack of understanding,” Brown said of the PRIDE initiative. “That is why we are so excited and honored to receive this grant from the NIMH to evaluate a treatment that integrates approaches that affirm and support LGBTQIA+ identities.”
Brown (pictured above, left) runs Auburn’s Appearance Concerns, Eating, Prevention and Treatment (ACCEPT) lab, which states its aim is to “improve eating disorder treatment for traditionally underserved populations,” according to the Auburn website. Blashill heads San Diego State University’s Body Image, Sexuality and Health lab, which “explores the role body image plays in influencing eating disorders and other health behaviors, with a focus on health disparities among sexual and gender minority individuals.”
Blashill (pictured above, right) co-authored a study published in November entitled, “The Association Between Minority Stressors, Intraminority Stressors, And Borderline Personality Disorder Symptomatology Among Sexual Minority Men,” which linked “minority stressors” such as “internalized homophobia and sexual orientation concealment” to criteria for borderline personality disorder.
The $5 million in total potential funding for the PRIDE program comes amid a broader Biden administration effort to fund LGBT initiatives across the globe, including the development of a mobile health app in Malaysia that instructs men on how to more safely engage in drug-fueled intercourse and a sex change program in Guatemala.
The incoming Trump administration could be poised to crack down on Biden’s LGBTQIA+ agenda, with President-elect Donald Trump announcing the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Nov. 12 that will look to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal Agencies.”
“The woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics…[that] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism; and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite,” DOGE co-leader Elon Musk said at an event in Italy in December 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It actually divides people and makes them hate each other and hate themselves.”
Brown, Blashill, Auburn, SDSU and the NIH did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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Owen Klinsky is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Aaron Blashill” by San Diego State University. Photo “Tiffany Brown” by the University of Auburn.
