TFF Open Letter: Sex Text Hotline May Violate Federal Laws!
The Family Foundation is continuing to push back against a dangerous government-sponsored program that encourages teens to text an anonymous person their questions about sex, relationships, and gender identity without the consent or even knowledge of their parents.
As we recently told you, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) contracted with the American Sexual Health Association (ASHA) to facilitate the “BrdsNBz” program, wherein VDH mailed kid-friendly postcards to 96,000 households this summer, inviting our teens to use what amounts to a sex-text hotline promoted by the state government but run by a third party in another state.
Now we are bringing to light, as the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, that Governor Northam’s Health Department used federal funds from the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant – designed for use in promoting only abstinence-based education – to promote the BrdsNBz sex text line to our kids!
This federal program specifically states that “the purpose of an allotment under [the Title V State Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Grant] to a State … is to enable the State or other entity to implement education exclusively on sexual risk avoidance (meaning voluntarily refraining from sexual activity).” During the recent Special Session that lasted 84 days, Sen. Steve Newman (R-Bedford) introduced a budget amendment that would have prohibited VDH from funding this program, at least until the legislature could look into it and decide whether this was a good policy decision, but the budget amendment failed on a party-line vote.
On Friday, November 20, we issued a press release about our joint Open Letter with eight other pro-family organizations in states with the same or similar program, which we sent to Secretary Alex Azar at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The letter – initiated and written by The Family Foundation – voices our concerns that federal funds intended for abstinence education was being misused by state government agencies, and it urges the HHS to take every necessary step to prevent the continued funding of these programs and to exercise all other available remedies consistent with law to protect families.
Almost immediately, we were approached by radio shows for us to discuss this latest development, including with Virginia Public Radio. In addition, both the Christian Post and LifeSite News published articles that included some direct quotes I made, such as:
“Virginia’s sex textline is clearly not providing abstinence education and therefore represents, at best, an obvious misuse of federal funds, or worse, a flat out violation of federal law.”
“While we are disappointed to learn of this misuse, we are glad we can help raise awareness of these textlines targeting teens and circumventing parents in multiple states.”
The momentum is building again to shed light on these government programs that are a gross invasion of our kids’/teens’ privacy while circumventing parents. Please continue to stand with us as we remain steadfast in our commitment to advocate for Virginia families.
