Weaponized HHS Takes LGBT Agenda on ‘Offense’

Biden’s Health Department is being weaponized to promote homosexuality and the transgender agenda. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra launched the department’s “Pride Summit” on Monday, stressing the importance of normalizing the LGBT agenda. He quipped, “Supporting the LGBTQI+ community is a top priority for me and HHS. Equity runs at the heart of every initiative we take on here.”

Numerous Biden administration officials participated in the event, including White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who identifies as a lesbian, and HHS Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine, a biological man who identifies as a woman. Several other non-governmental LGBT activists were present too, including American Civil Liberties Union “Trans Justice Strategist” Arli Christian and Casey Pick, director of Law and Policy for the Trevor Project, which has hosted sexually explicit online chatrooms for children and teens.

The Pride Summit served dual purposes: the first was to laud, in the words of an HHS press release, “the historic actions taken by the Biden-Harris Administration to ensure that LGBTQI+ communities … have the resources and support they need and deserve.” Under Biden’s tenure, the HHS has turned into a veritable LGBT cheerleading squad, with both Becerra and Levine marching in Pride parades and vociferously promoting gender transition procedures (including genital mutilation surgeries) for minors, flying the “Progress Pride” flag outside HHS headquarters, and hosting a pro-trans roundtable discussion — and that’s just this month’s activities.

The second purpose of the Pride Summit was to showcase future HHS endeavors to promote LGBT ideology. Among them are the planned release of a “Behavioral Health Care Advisory on Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth” for mental health experts to use in advocating for harmful gender transition procedures, mandating state child welfare agencies use federal funding to promote gender transition procedures, and efforts to force health care providers to violate their consciences and commit gender transition procedures.

Becerra said of the HHS’s efforts, “This game of defense can get tiring. We want offense. Let’s play on the offensive and let’s grow.”

The sentiment was echoed by Levine, who tweeted last week, “All summer long we will be celebrating the ‘Summer of Pride.’” He repeated the slogan at the Pride Summit, calling for not just a whole month dedicated to the LGBT agenda but a whole season: “Happy Pride Month, and actually — let’s declare it a summer of Pride.”

Speaking on gender transition procedures for children — including puberty blockers, hormone drugs, medically-unnecessary double mastectomies, and genital mutilation surgeries — Levine declared, “We often say that gender-affirming care is healthcare, gender-affirming care is mental healthcare, and gender-affirming care is literally suicide prevention care.” There is no evidence to support Levine’s claims, and there is actually evidence which contradicts it.

In fact, Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, Family Research Council’s director of the Center for Family Studies, told The Washington Stand that “this is the most invasive ‘intervention’ that exists to treat any psychological condition and yet it has the least evidence to recommend it.” In a 2021 study authored by Bauwens, she noted that “despite the years of empirical study, there is no clear understanding of etiology in the suicide literature. In other words, there is no clear understanding of the individual and combined risks that cause a person to commit suicide,” yet transgender advocates consistently claim to know definitively, after a cursory period of usually inconsistent research, exactly why teens and adults identifying as transgender commit suicide.

Most U.S. studies on the link between gender transition procedures and suicide are largely inconclusive, admitting that there is not enough data available over a long enough period of time. The most thorough study on the subject comes from Sweden. The 30-year-long study found that the suicide rate amongst those who identify as transgender increased after gender transition surgeries, rising to at least 20 times the suicide rate of peers.

Back in 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services refused to mandate coverage of gender transition procedures, citing an absence of evidence that such procedures are actually beneficial. That was undone by the Biden administration last year, and health insurance providers are now required to cover gender transition procedures. Conservative author and commentator Matt Walsh’s documentary “What Is a Woman?” also explores the question, highlighting the experiences of those who regret their gender transitions and the increased risk of suicide, especially since underlying psychological issues aren’t addressed by gender transition procedures.

Quena Gonzalez, Family Research Council’s senior director of Government Affairs, told The Washington Stand, “How much more aggressive can the Biden administration possibly get? We may be about to find out. Buckle up: Biden has another year and a half in this term.”

Monday’s Pride Summit doesn’t just mark the ideological weaponization of yet another federal agency under Biden’s guidance: since his appointment to head HHS in 2021, Becerra has turned the department into arguably the largest pro-abortion activism arm in the U.S. It should be no surprise that a man who considers the brutal, broadscale killing of unborn babies to be “health care” should also advocate for the sexualization and mutilation of children who aren’t killed in the womb.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

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