If all you know of the Federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention is the description you read on its “About” page:
As it was during the Biden administration, the CDC describes itself as “the nation’s leading science-based, data-driven, service organization that protects the public’s health.”
It says, among other things:
Screenshot capture: February 24, 2025, 11:58PM
“(P)uts science into action to help children stay healthy so they can grow and learn…”
Sounds great, right?
But if you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community and you’re an adolescent?
Watch out. There’s an oncoming storm.
It’s not just about what is on the CDC site: but what is no longer on it.
What’s currently on the site is a disclaimer. That is, at minimum, a government expression of point-of-view rather than science-based, data-driven language:
Screenshot capture: February 24, 2025, 11:53PM
”Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of 11:59PM ET, February 14, 2025. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.”
(Let’s take a moment to note that whoever wrote this – likely an adult male – structured their argument in a way that equates “children” and “women” as if it were 1825 rather than 2025.)
A friend of mine called the disclaimer “one of the most reprehensible things I’ve ever seen.” I agree.
Still, as a high school counselor, I’m far more bothered by what is not on the site any more.
If you go to the site’s page on “Healthy Youth,” under the disclaimer, you’ll find a page purporting to offer information on:
- Mental Health
- Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth
- Health Disparities,
- Conversation Tips
And more. But try clicking on any of those links?
You’ll get an error message.
Telling you that “The page you’re looking for was not found.”
You haven’t been 404’ed. This is not a server error.
Or maybe it is, since the federal government – from the White House to the CDC to even unelected appointees like Elon Musk – was designed to serve the American people.
Even if I take the new administration at its word; that it is trying to avoid harm caused to children, I would like to know how these actions avoid causing harm:
- Removing references to resources that support adolescent mental health, such as Genders and Sexualities Alliances, community organizations, and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
- Removing a resource offering teachers objectives for their own professional development and understanding of LGBTQ+ youth.
- Separating trans youth from their LGBQ peers, which is not only hurtful but also nonsensical, as some youth identify as both trans and queer.
- Putting the offensive disclaimer atop an otherwise useful “Terminology” page that now seems at war with itself.
None of this keeps LGBTQ+ youth safe.
What can: is science-based, data-driven service, the kind the CDC offered… until a little more than a month ago.
Fortunately, with some help from The Internet Archive, we were able to re-create at least some of the pages that have disappeared or been radically reworked.
The pages were copied and uploaded locally to this site, exactly as they appeared on the CDC site prior to mid-January, except for the deletion of links to other, no-longer-existent CDC pages.
LGBTQ+ youth, and the adults who love and support them, can find restored information about:
- Supporting LGBTQ Youth
- Mental Health
- Conversation Tips
- Health Disparities
- Creating Safe Schools for LGBTQ Youth
- Health Disparities Among LGBTQ Youth
- and Terminology
We’ve also located and are making available:
And no surprise: On the CDC site:
“The page you’re looking for was not found.”
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While this anti-science philosophy of the current administration is having its moment, let’s hope that there will be a return to reality in 4 or even 2 years. I’m cautiously optimistic that the pendulum will swing back from its current extremum. Meanwhile things like this, and other intentional ignoring of inconvenient science, are so frustrating.
Thank you, Chuck! This a great thing to do.
I think some people believe in their ideology only because learning about people different from them is too much work. It’s intellectual laziness. Ignorance is so much easier than getting those synapses working.
Then certain politicians lean into that laziness, saying “Just let me handle everything, and it’ll all be OK.” I suspect many in the new administration (and some media outlets around them) don’t believe this claptrap but use it for their own benefit. So making this sort of information easily available is against their self-interest.
All the more reason to make it available anywhere and everywhere.
As an outside observer I’m looking on in dismay at the backwards steps being taken and wondering if we have a version of this to look forward to in 4 years.
I can only applaud you Chuck for your efforts to make a difference for those who need it.
Thank you so much for this contribution toward a more sane world.
It hurts that everyone in charge around here (the Federal gov’t, I mean) is vindictive and mean and purposefully ignorant of the way the world is. We can only hope they remain stupid as they have been, but I’m afraid they’re developing a rude competency that can only do more damage.
Great, important work.
As a fed worker, I can confirm that the digital bonfire is real.
Every administration change comes with new priorities and sometimes new shifts in preferred terms. But never before have workers had to go and delete language from older approved products. Never before have employees had to worry about their jobs because they used certain words in publications or presentations. This is straight out of Stalinist Russia.
And it’s definitely its own type of “gender ideology.” The worst kind–the kind that tolerates no dissent.
As someone who is potentially on the chopping block simply because I got a promotion–and therefore “probational” as a supervisor–I have zero fucks to give about the language I use. I am not going to go out of my way to defy the new administration, but I am also not going to change how I normally speak, or change any old data I ran. If that means I’m fired, well, it’s gonna come some other way with these folks somewhere down the line. They can bully us and screw with us from their perches of power, but let’s keep our language, our norms, and our ownership of the culture. They are the weirdos.
Supervisor Phylum, we hope that you are exempted from all RIFs!
Wow, Mr. Small. I had to check in. I’ve been a politico junkie ever since I saw Masha Gessen tell a MSNBC host on election night 2016: “Don’t take democracy for granted.”
It takes some courage to speak out against the current administration. And kudos to, mt58, for publishing it.
Great job!