Agency accused of deleting LGBTQ webpage after criticism

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HOUSTON (AP) The Texas child welfare agency is accused of removing a webpage providing information about a suicide prevention hotline and other resources for LGBTQ youth, following criticism of one of Governor Greg Abbotts’ main challengers.

The Houston Chronicle reported on Tuesday that Abbott’s challenger Don Huffines posted a video on Twitter in August accusing the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services of promoting transgender sex policies to Texas youth. A few hours after the video was posted, the web page was deleted.

The page appears in a section of the agency’s website titled Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation.

The entire website of Texas Youth Connection, a division of family and protective services that directs young people in foster care to various resources, including education, housing, and those on its LGBTQ page, has also disappeared.

It’s not Texas values, it’s not Republican Party values, but obviously it’s Greg Abbotts values, Huffines said in his video.

Abbott, who appoints the commissioner of the departments and the nine-member board, did not respond to the newspapers’ request for comment. An Abbott spokeswoman did not immediately return an Associated Press email requesting comment on Tuesday.

Patrick Crimmins, the spokesperson for the department, refused to answer detailed questions from the newspapers.

But agency communications obtained by the Houston Chronicle via a request for public documents showed that employees discussed the removal of the gender identity and sexual orientation page in response to Huffines’ tweet.

After being contacted by media relations director Marissa Gonzales that the Huffines video was starting to explode on Twitter, Crimmins reached out to Darrell Azar, the agency’s director of web and creative services, who oversees the page.

Darrell, please note that we may need to remove this page or somehow revise the content, Crimmins wrote.

Ricardo Martinez, chief executive of LGBTQ rights group Equality Texas, said LGBTQ children are disproportionately represented in foster care and face truly staggering discrimination and abuse.

The state is responsible for the lives of these children, but it has intentionally taken away a way for them to find help when they need it most, Martinez said. This action is unreasonable and reminds us that political aspirations are part of every attack on LGBTQ + children in Texas.

Huffins, one of the three main GOP challengers facing Abbott next year, criticized the governors’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the influx of migrants to the state’s southern border.

Huffines, a former state senator, said his campaign prompted Abbott to take more conservative stances on some issues.

In August, Abbott asked Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Jaime Masters to determine whether sex reassignment surgery for transgender minors was a form of child abuse. He also called on the agency to investigate parents whose children are undergoing the procedure if it finds that such surgeries constitute abuse.

The masters responded by agreeing with Abbott, calling the surgeries child abuse. LGBTQ advocates say surgery is rarely performed on children.

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