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       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 after 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.

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       This statement is a gross distortion.

       Of the 11 resources previously listed on the Virginia Department of Health website for LGBTQ+ youths, zero of them allowed adults to engage in inappropriate, anonymous conversations with children. One source, Q Chat Space, hosts live chatrooms for teens facilitated by trained professionals. Private messaging is not allowed; the open chat is terminated for all users at the end of the discussion. Another website, Side by Side, hosts hybrid discussions for Virginia-based LGBTQ+ youths conducted by facilitators who must undergo training and a background check before joining the organization. And youths under 14 require parental consent to participate. Clearly, these sites — whose founders are LGBTQ+ themselves — have taken great precautions to make sure the services they offer to youths are safe.

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       The other nine resources featured therapy services, suicide prevention and sexual assault hotlines, STI testing, college scholarships and more — all resources that had nothing to do with the chatrooms. Yet they, too, vanished from the state website.

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       Also on the Editorial Board’s agenda arrow left arrow right

       D.C. Council reverses itself on school resource officers. Good. Virginia makes a mistake by pulling out of an election fraud detection group. Vietnam sentences another democracy activist. Biden has a new border plan.

       The D.C. Council voted on Tuesday to stop pulling police officers out of schools, a big win for student safety. Parents and principals overwhelmingly support keeping school resource officers around because they help de-escalate violent situations. D.C. joins a growing number of jurisdictions, from Montgomery County, Md., to Denver, in reversing course after withdrawing officers from school grounds following George Floyd’s murder. Read our recent editorial on why D.C. needs SROs.

       Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) just withdrew Virginia from a data-sharing consortium, ERIC, that made the commonwealth’s elections more secure, following Republicans in seven other states in falling prey to disinformation peddled by election deniers. Former GOP governor Robert F. McDonnell made Virginia a founding member of ERIC in 2012, and until recently conservatives touted the group as a tool to combat voter fraud. D.C. and Maryland plan to remain. Read our recent editorial on ERIC.

       In Vietnam, a one-party state, democracy activist Tran Van Bang was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison and three years probation for writing 39 Facebook posts. The court claimed he had defamed the state in his writings, according to Radio Free Asia. In the past six years, at least 60 bloggers and activists have been sentenced to between 4 and 15 years in prison under the law, Human Rights Watch found. Read more of the Editorial Board’s coverage on autocracy and Vietnam.

       The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.

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       LGBTQ+ youths need these resources; this demographic is uniquely at risk of poor mental health and violent victimization. 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.

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       Removing these resources cannot be passed off as protecting children from danger. There is nothing inherently sexual or inappropriate about LGBTQ+ adults fostering spaces for LGBTQ+ children to express themselves and find community. For the Youngkin administration to insinuate that these chat spaces sexualize children perpetuates the harmful — and untrue — narrative that LGBTQ+ adults are predators. Children are far more likely to encounter online predators in places most parents pay little mind to: 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.

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       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.

       This is not the first time the Youngkin administration has undermined the rights of LGBTQ+ children. Mr. Youngkin’s Department of Education recently finalized new policies prohibiting teachers from referring to students by their preferred name and gender pronouns unless the parents have requested them to do so in writing, limiting the participation of trans kids in school sports and requiring trans students to use the restrooms associated with their sex assigned at birth.

       This is not even the first time that the Youngkin administration has stripped the Virginia Department of Health website of vital resources. It has done so three times since the governor took office a year and a half ago, previously deleting resources concerning abortion, sexual health and pregnancy — all without consulting its own experts.

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       The Virginia state government justifies its policies with the claim that they preserve parental rights. In the case of the Virginia Department of Health website, Mr. Youngkin’s spokeswoman stated the government should not endorse online resources for LGBTQ+ kids that their taxpaying parents disapprove of. Children belong to their parents, said Ms. Porter. Not the state.

       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. LGBTQ+ kids who are not supported by their families are extremely vulnerable to experiencing homelessness. Despite making up only 7 percent of the population, LGBTQ+ kids comprise up to 40 percent of homeless youths.

       Mr. Youngkin’s removal of these resources equally does a disservice to Virginia parents who do wish to support their LGBTQ+ children. They, too, have been denied reliable resources on the state website that could teach them how to best show up for their kids.

       When LGBTQ+ kids cannot find acceptance in the home, they will search for validation elsewhere. Limiting access to supportive online resources will not stop them from discovering who they are. It will only make it more difficult — and more dangerous — for them to do so.

       The Post’s View | About the Editorial Board Editorials represent the views of The Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom.

       Members of the Editorial Board and areas of focus: Opinion Editor David Shipley; Deputy Opinion Editor Karen Tumulty; Associate Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg (national politics and policy); Lee Hockstader (European affairs, based in Paris); David E. Hoffman (global public health); James Hohmann (domestic policy and electoral politics, including the White House, Congress and governors); Charles Lane (foreign affairs, national security, international economics); Heather Long (economics); Associate Editor Ruth Marcus; Mili Mitra (public policy solutions and audience development); Keith B. Richburg (foreign affairs); and Molly Roberts (technology and society).

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