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After an inquiry from the right-wing media outlet Daily Wire this May about two websites listed on a Virginia Department of Health webpage offering resources for LGBTQ youth, internal agency emails indicate Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration took the entire page down, leaving agency employees who oversaw it bewildered.
“Did someone request this?” asked Emily Yeatts, a supervisor for the Department of Health’s Division of Child and Family Health, in a May 31 email to other staff members. “This request did not come from the program.”
At roughly the same time, Vanessa Walker Harris, director of the Office of Family Health Services — the office responsible for managing content on the page — also sent out an email to employees in the division, as well as communications staff and Deputy VDH Commissioner Robert Hicks.
“I’m noticing that the referenced webpage is no longer accessible and I’m having a bad case of deja vu,” wrote Walker Harris. “What am I missing? I’m very concerned that staff were directed to remove the webpage without engaging [subject matter experts] in response to a politically motivated inquiry, yet again.”
When the Mercury asked VDH on June 5 about the removal of the Resources for LGBTQ Youth page, internal emails obtained under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act show agency Chief Operating Officer Christopher Lindsay initially drafted a response noting it was “part of an overall project to look at areas of the VDH website that can use redesign.”
“We are using data to look at website traffic and will redesign towards public health initiatives tht are relevant to consumer demand,” Lindsay wrote.
The response was never transmitted to the Mercury. And other emails obtained under FOIA indicate the removal was ordered by the office of Secretary of Health and Human Resources John Littel in response to an inquiry on the morning of May 31 from a Daily Wire reporter named Spencer Lindquist, who subsequently published an article on two resources listed on the page.
Additionally, the emails indicate an audit was initiated of the Office of Family Health Services’ webpages, with searches conducted for nine terms related to LGBTQ issues.
In response to inquiries about the webpage’s removal and the audit, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter wrote that “in Virginia, the governor will always reaffirm a parent’s role in their child’s life. Children belong to their parents, not the state.”
“The webpage in question outsourced conversations where adults directly speak with children about sex to a third party,” Porter said. “The governor supports providing resources that are age appropriate however the government should not facilitate anonymous conversations between adults and children without a parent’s approval. Sexualizing children against a parent’s wishes doesn’t belong on a taxpayer supported website.”
Questions preceded removal
Screenshots of the LGBTQ Resources for Youth webpage found through the Wayback Machine show the page included links to two national websites known as Q Chat Space and Queer Kid Stuff, as well as Virginia Pride, state LGBTQ organizations the TREVOR Project and the Virginia Antiviolence Project, which operate help lines and run suicide prevention programs, and medical and counseling services for LGBTQ and transgender youth in the Richmond area.
Lindquist was particularly interested in the Q Chat Space and Queer Kid Stuff sites. At 9:12 that morning, he sent agency communications staff a series of inquiries about the two links.
“How are resources selected by the Virginia Department of Health?” Lindquist wrote. “Queer Kid Stuff has previously promoted child transgenderism. Does the Virginia Department of Health take a stance on the medical transitioning of minors? Is the Virginia Department of Health aware that the QChat Space, which is marketed to those as young as 13 who identify as LGBT, has a special quick escape feature that allows users to swiftly exit the site?”
Lindquist gave the agency two hours to reply.
Q Chat Space, which offers “live, chat-based discussion groups for LGBTQ+ and questioning teens ages 13 to 19 … facilitated by experienced staff and volunteers from youth programs at LGBTQ+ centers across the United States,” was developed by three groups: CenterLink, which provides support to community LGBTQ centers; PFLAG, the nation’s largest and oldest organization for LGBTQ people; and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Queer Kid Stuff describes itself as “an edutainment company on a mission to spread queer joy to LGBTQ+ kids, parents, caregivers, educators, their loved ones, and allies.” Among its “core values” the group lists “centering queer identity, experience, and history … with particular emphasis on unearthing historic erasure,” “working to actively destigmatize queer topics in early childhood spaces,” promoting joy and community, “liberating all children from white supremacist systems that do not prioritize the needs of our youngest and most vulnerable,” and “actively pushing against business models that prioritize capital over humanity.”
According to an internal email by Lindsay, both Q Chat Space and Queer Kid Stuff were added to the agency webpage in October 2019. Over the past 12 months, Lindsay noted 189 visitors to the page had clicked through to Q Chat Space, while Queer Kid Stuff had been accessed 154 times.
In total, Lindsay said the LGBTQ Resources for Youth page had been visited over 2,500 times in the past year. In almost 2,100 of those visits, people who accessed the site immediately left it.
Following Lindquist’s inquiry on the morning of May 31, Yeatts and Rachel Brown, VDH’s adolescent health coordinator, drafted a response to his questions, which they sent onto communications staff.
“One of VDH’s goals is to be a trusted source of public health information for all Virginians. All Virginians includes people of all ages, races, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and ability statuses,” the draft statement read. “VDH does not have a ‘stance’ on medical transition; as a state agency, VDH provides information, and the administration takes a position on issues.”
“VDH’s webpage includes information for all people, including transgender youth, and strives to include information consistent with best public health practices,” it continued. “QChat Space is not managed by VDH, but we can share that ‘quick escape’ features are typical for a variety of websites, particularly websites that could put a person at risk for violence from others. Intimate partner violence/sexual violence/domestic violence webpages often have this feature. LGBT people are at increased risk for violence.”
The statement was never used. Instead, VDH Director of Communications Maria Reppas told staff she was “working with leadership on this one” and “given the timeline the reporter gave, we will be unable to meet it.” Lindquist’s story ultimately noted the agency had not responded to a request for comment.
Sometime that afternoon, the LGBTQ Resources for Youth page was removed, prompting the flurry of inquiries from staffers including Walker Harris and Yeatts.
"This isn’t our first experience with webpages ... disappearing.”
At nearly 5 p.m., Walker Harris emailed several agency employees to say she had “received an update that HHR directed removal of the webpage.”
“I’m hopeful that we’ll get additional guidance about allowable resources and be able to post some, if not all of the provider and state resources back to the webpage,” she continued, before referencing an “audit” of OFHS webpages for the words “LGBTQIA,” “queer,” “transgender,” “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual,” “questioning” and “non binary.”
In another email, Walker Harris said she had expressed frustration to VDH’s recently appointed new commissioner, Dr. Karen Shelton, about the removal of the webpage.
Shelton “apologized for how it was handled; she received a directive from HHR to pull the webpage down and there wasn’t much time to communicate about it,” Walker Harris wrote. “She was receptive to my feedback and I asked if we could receive an update on allowable resources from the page to repost since the resources targeting queer adolescents were just a portion of the site. So more to come on that.”
As of July 6, the webpage had not been restored.
“I also shared that this isn’t our first experience with webpages, links, etc disappearing,” Walker Harris continued in an apparent reference to the removal of several VDH webpages on sexual health resources for adolescents and an online presentation identifying one of VDH’s priorities as exploring and eliminating “drivers of structural and institutional racism.”
Those pages were removed under prior Commissioner Dr. Colin Greene, who came under fire following Washington Post reporting about his skepticism of established scientific research linking racism with sharp disparities in maternal mortality. Senate Democrats later blocked Greene’s appointment over the controversy.
