Because they just can’t get enough of bashing Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) and his administration that’s promoted the novel concept of involving parents in education, The Washington Post returned to the well Thursday with its editorial board pitching a hissy fit in “Youngkin takes vital resources away from LGBTQ+ youth — again.”
The source of The Post’s ire? Well, in their telling, “On May 31, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) quietly authorized the removal of a resource page for LGBTQ+ youths on the Virginia Department of Health website following an inquiry from the conservative news outlet the Daily Wire.”
“In defense of this decision, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter stated this month that the resources promoted ‘sexualizing children’ and allowed the government to facilitate anonymous conversations between children and adults without parental consent. This statement is a gross distortion,” they added.
They insisted none “[o]f 11 resource previously listed…allowed adults to engage in inappropriate, anonymous conversations with children” with one group requiring “training and a background check” and another requiring anyone under 14 to have parental consent. Better yet, they argued, such groups have “founders” who “are LGBTQ+ themselves,” so they must be above board.
Of course, the supposed outrage about removing these links from state website ignored the fact that such organizations are still available through basic internet searches as well as strayed into the usual territory that speaking out against anything LGBTQ means you’re risk mental and physical harm to children.
“LGBTQ+ youths need these resources; this demographic is uniquely at risk of poor mental health and violent victimization…Removing these resources cannot be passed off as protecting children from danger,” they explained, going the route of, to borrow a phrase from Erick Erickson, being made to care.
The Post then stated plainly that there’s “nothing inherently sexual or inappropriate about LGBTQ+ adults fostering spaces for LGBTQ+ children to express themselves and find community.”
In other words, they have no problem coming for your kids.
They insisted such guardrails “perpetuates the harmful — and untrue — narrative that LGBTQ+ adults are predators” and proclaimed LGBTQ+ sites “are not dangerous” whereas the rest of the internet is another story. No wonder the liberal media are so pro-censorship (click “expand”):
According to the Trevor Project (one of the removed sites), LGBTQ+ youths are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their non-LGBTQ+ peers. One in 2 transgender people are sexually abused or assaulted within their lifetime; this is four times the rate of cisgender people.
(….)
Children are far more likely to encounter online predators in places most parents pay little mind: video games and social media. Private conversations between users on these platforms are largely unregulated; almost 90 percent of sexual advances toward children begin in internet chatrooms or through instant messaging, and 80 percent of child sex crimes start on social media.
The internet is not always a safe place for children — this much is obvious. But LGBTQ+ support groups monitored by experienced facilitators are not dangerous. Targeting them is a red herring.
Sure, some sites have an age requirement of 14, but it’s safe to say parents still care for the remaining four years their child’s a minor. In turn, any sexualizing of them is gross and, well, could land you in serious legal trouble.
Instead, they doubled down on their disgust for his education policy of requiring schools and parents to be on the same page of which gender a student wants to identify as. The Post lied on this one because the two-way street “limit[s] the participation of trans kids in school sports, and requiring trans students to use the bathrooms associated with their biological sex.”
In the world of The Post, parental consent must be scandalous.
The Post ended by wiggling its way out of Porter after she informed them of the obvious, which is children belong to parents, not the government: “True. But the unfortunate reality is that parents are not always nurturing of their LGBTQ+ children. Only 1 in 3 LGBTQ+ children live in an affirming home.”
They also reupped the strawman that not wholly endorsing and rallying to worship LGBTQ+ students means not only are you doing “a disservice,” but endangering their lives because “they will search for…validation elsewhere” and “limiting access” in the form of a link on a state government cite has…“dangerous” consequences?
Consent dies in darkness.