conservatism

"A part of a US national suicide prevention hotline that caters for LGBTQ young people says it will soon close, after the Trump administration cut its funding. The administration has accused the service of "radical gender ideology". It says it will still fund the wider 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline - of which the LGBTQ youth option is one part - and that all callers will receive "compassion and help". The Trevor Project, an organisation that helped to run the LGBTQ option, said the decision would have a harmful impact on vulnerable young people. "Suicide prevention is about people, not politics," said Jaymes Black, the organisation's CEO. He said his service had been told to close within 30 days. "The administration's decision to remove a bipartisan, evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high-risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible," Mr Black added. The decision comes during international Pride Month, which celebrates LGBTQ culture and history."

"Officials at HHS proposed cutting the 988 Lifeline's LGBTQ youth services last week. In a statement to NBC News at the time, an HHS spokesperson described the option as a "chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents". Legislation passed in 2020 by the US Congress required the 988 Lifeline to provide services and staff specifically for LGBTQ people as well as other at-risk groups like rural and Native Americans. The legislation noted that LGBTQ youth were "more than 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers, with 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth and more than 1 in 3 transgender youth reporting attempting suicide". The law received bipartisan support - including from Donald Trump, who was then serving his first presidential term, and signed the bill into law. According to the 988 Lifeline website, LGBTQ communities are "disproportionately at risk for suicide and other mental health struggles due to historic and ongoing structural violence." The Trevor Project began providing its services through the 988 Lifeline in 2022. In 2024, it served more than 231,000 crisis contacts, the organisation said in a statement. It says it will continue to provide its own independent services."

"The news also arrived ahead of a US Supreme Court decision on Tuesday that upheld the state of Tennessee's ban on transition-related healthcare for minors who identify as transgender. The general 988 Lifeline offers free mental health support via call, text, or chat. It is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a subsidiary of the US Health and Human Services Agency (HHS). Currently, LGBTQ young people can select option 3 from a call menu in order to connect with counsellors. After the changes, the remaining 988 Lifeline services would "focus on serving all help seekers", including those who previously chose to access LGBTQ youth services, SAMHSA said. But the hotline would "no longer silo LGB+ youth services", SAMHSA wrote in a statement, omitting the "T" and "Q" that refers to transgender and queer people in the LGBTQ acronym."

"Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority. For example, steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females may contravene Federal laws that protect parental rights, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), and sex-based equality and opportunity, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX). Similarly, demanding acquiescence to “White Privilege” or “unconscious bias,” actually promotes racial discrimination and undermines national unity."

"Hey Dad. Thanks for setting aside time to meet with me, it means a lot to me. There are a lot of important issues passing through the legislature right now. For my own sake I’ve chosen to focus primarily on transgender rights, as that would significantly directly affect a number of my friends… I would like to make the argument that these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights."

"Trump administration health officials announced Thursday that the federal government will block transgender care to children by targeting hospitals and doctors that provide it. New proposed rules would prohibit hospitals from participating in Medicare and Medicaid if they provide care such as puberty blockers and surgeries for transgender minors, and would prevent federal coverage of such treatments. “These procedures fail to meet professionally recognized standards of care,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, calling many types of transgender care “malpractice.” “Medical professionals or entities providing sex-rejecting procedures to children are out of compliance with these standards of health care.” Medical groups denounced the announcements, saying they intrude on physician-patient relationships and jeopardize care for everyone. “Allowing the government to determine which patient groups deserve care sets a dangerous precedent, and children and families will bear the consequences,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics."

"The Left has taken away all of the neutral cultural ground. This is why brands like Bud Light and Nike are giving endorsement deals to a dude in a dress... They can be baptized into wokeism and openly worship at the LGBT altar, or they can by default align themselves with conservatives... Here's what we should do: Pick a victim, gang up on it, and make an example of it. We can't boycott every woke company or even most of them. But we can pick one, it hardly matters which, and target it with a ruthless boycott campaign. Claim one scalp then move onto the next."

"The U.S. Department of Education urged the NCAA and the NFHS on Tuesday to restore female athletes' records and awards that were "wrongfully erased" by biological males, who "unfairly competed" in women's sports. The letter, sent to the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Federation of State High School Associations, comes one week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban transgender women from competing in women's sports "as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity and truth." The NCAA updated its policies Thursday to comply with the order and limit "competition in women's sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only." The Education Department called restoring female athletes' records the "next necessary step." "The next necessary step is to restore athletic records to women who have for years been devalued, ignored and forced to watch men steal their accolades," said Candice Jackson, deputy general counsel. "The Trump Education Department will do everything in our power to right this wrong and champion the hard-earned accomplishments of past, current and future female collegiate athletes.""

"It’s not our fault that the truth hurts them, it’s their fault that the truth hurts them, because they have turned their back on the truth and they’ve turned their back on God... [Democrats] passed a bill to make it a federal law to protect gay marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman, and that’s between God and a man and a woman."

"I hope the next time there's an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands."

"Still, senior DoDEA officials’ focus on rooting out books that talk about transgender people stands out the most, said this DoDEA employee. “They are really trying to deny transgender people exist,” said the employee. “It makes me physically ill.” A second DoDEA employee told HuffPost it’s clear that, in their scramble to comply with Trump’s executive orders, the agency’s leadership has had “a tendency to err far on the side of caution.” DoDEA students last month sued the agency over its book bans, arguing that it is violating their First Amendment rights. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit on behalf of 12 students from six families, ranging in age from pre-K to 11th grade. All are children of active-duty U.S. service members stationed in Virginia, Kentucky, Italy or Japan."

"HuffPost obtained an internal list of 80-something books that have been banned, or are in the process of being banned, at schools across the DoDEA system, which provides K-12 education to more than 67,000 kids in 11 countries, seven states, Guam and Puerto Rico. HuffPost isn’t providing the full list at the request of the DoDEA employee who shared it; they feared they could lose their job. But the clear theme to these books is that in one way or another, they talk about gender identity, sexuality and race."

"I am deeply alarmed by a widespread, profoundly negative riptide created by deliberate actions to roll back the human rights of LGBT people at state level. The evidence shows that, without exception, these actions rely on prejudiced and stigmatising views of LGBT persons, in particular transgender children and youth, and seek to leverage their lives as props for political profit."

"[Gender transition] is a major problem. I will be actively lobbying to criminalize making severe, irreversible changes to children below the age of consent. Shame on those who advocate this! It is utterly contemptible."

"Of course, I have been covering the wonderful month of Pride, for which I feel no pride for at all. I think it should be called shame month. It’s absolute debauchery. I spoke about this last week and when you believe when you start to see that your government is sponsoring that, when they’re putting real dollars behind things like drag queen story hour in New York City, you should realize that something nefarious is going on because the government does not care about your children. No, the government does not love your children. The government does not want your children to be accepted. The government wants your children to be enslaved to government for the rest of their life. And right now, as we’re seeing, there is a marriage between government and big pharma. It is my belief that that is the push behind this effort to tell children that they can pick their gender and to confuse them. And you’re seeing right now that adults are getting behind this narrative so they can have a woke T-shirt on and say I love my children. I allowed my child to pick their gender and pick their species. And they feel proud of themselves because they can go and they can say this on Facebook that they are wonderful, accepting, and loving adults. When, in reality, they are underqualified to have children. They should have their children taken away from them because it’s child abuse."

"I named SB 12 to be one of my top priorities this session because someone must push back against the radical left’s disgusting drag performances which harm Texas children. It is shocking to me that any parent would allow their young child to be sexualized by drag shows. Children, who cannot make decisions on their own, must be protected from this scourge facing our state."

"It’s a shift led by Trump, whose proposed federal funding ban is just one of an array of policies designed to position himself as the Republican candidate most fiercely opposed to transgender rights. But the change isn’t confined to the former president’s candidacy, with many of Trump’s rivals also offering blunt assessments about the legitimacy of medical procedures that help people transition to their self-identified gender while adopting many of the former president’s own positions, including a ban on federal funds for gender transition surgery that LGBTQ advocates call a dramatic new front for the party’s anti-transgender agenda."

"In statements to McClatchyDC, the campaigns of many of the primary’s leading contenders — including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson — said they also support bans on the use of federal taxpayer money for gender transition surgeries for all ages. “Taxpayer money should not be used for transgender surgery,” said Hutchinson, who as a candidate has been generally more reluctant to embrace the sharp-elbowed culture-warrior persona of other GOP contenders. “It is an individual choice to undertake transgender surgery and it is objectionable to many taxpayers. Taxpayers should not foot the bill.” Other candidates supportive of the ban offered an even broader condemnation of all gender-reassignment surgeries as a treatment option. “It’s wrong to treat anorexia with a liposuction, just as it’s inhumane to treat a person who suffers from gender dysphoria with genital mutilation,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Ramaswamy’s campaign, told McClatchyDC in a statement this week. “These are mental health illnesses and should be treated as such.”"

"Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and a prominent figure in the American conservative movement, was fatally shot during a live event at Utah Valley University on 10 September. His death has reignited scrutiny over his controversial political stances, particularly his outspoken opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion. Kirk, aged 31, built his reputation as a staunch supporter of right-wing ideologies, often courting controversy with inflammatory remarks. His views on LGBTQ issues were among the most divisive. He frequently described progressive stances on gender and sexuality as “sexual anarchy” and condemned LGBTQ-inclusive education, arguing that it eroded cultural identity. In multiple broadcasts and public appearances, Kirk used anti-transgender slurs and celebrated being able to do so on platforms like Rumble. He labelled transgender individuals as “groomers” and advocated for banning gender-affirming care, even suggesting that providers should face “Nuremberg-style trials”. His rhetoric aligned with broader efforts in right-wing media to roll back LGBTQ+ protections, including celebrating Supreme Court rulings that allowed businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ customers on religious grounds."

"Kirk’s comments extended to dangerous misinformation. Just moments before his fatal shooting, he responded to a question about trans mass shooters by saying “Too many,” despite data showing the vast majority of such incidents are committed by cisgender men. His influence was not limited to media. Kirk played a key role in shaping conservative youth discourse through Turning Point USA, a platform that has been criticised for hosting events and promoting narratives hostile to LGBTQ+ communities. Despite this, he was invited as the first guest on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s podcast earlier this year, a move that drew backlash given Kirk’s history of incendiary remarks. While tributes from political allies, including President Donald Trump, praised Kirk as “legendary,” critics argue that his legacy is marred by a pattern of bigotry and harmful rhetoric."

"On July 17, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will no longer silo LGB+ youth services, also known as the “Press 3 option,” to focus on serving all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press 3 option."

"One of the big issues that we have heard today and we've talked about lately is that without surgery the risk of suicide goes way up. Well, I am one of those parents who lived with a daughter who was suicidal for three years. Someone once asked me, "Wouldn't I just do anything to help save her?" And I really had to think and the answer was, "No." I was not going to give in to her emotional manipulation because she was incapable of making those decisions and I had to make those decisions for her. I was not going to let her tear apart my family and I was not going to let her tear apart me."

"The CDC should immediately end its collection of data on gender identity, which legitimizes the unscientific notion that men can become women (and vice versa) and encourages the phenomenon of ever-multiplying subjective identities."

"Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people... The immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status."

"We love you queens! We're in your corner and we've got you, and I will fuck anybody up who's trying to fuck with anything with you guys. There are so many things that are hurting and, really, killing our kids — and we all know what I'm talking about right now — and it ain't no drag queen. Because if you've ever seen a drag queen lip-sync for her life, it only makes you happier, it only makes you love more, it makes you a better person."

"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to take the rare step of renaming a ship, one that bears the name of a gay rights icon, documents and sources show. Military-dot-com reviewed a memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy -- the official who holds the power to name Navy ships -- that showed the sea service had come up with rollout plans for the renaming of the oiler ship USNS Harvey Milk. A defense official confirmed that the Navy was making preparations to strip the ship of its name but noted that Navy Secretary John Phelan was ordered to do so by Hegseth. The official also said that the timing of the announcement -- occurring during Pride month -- was intentional."

"When you start saying, ‘I’m a man, I become a woman, I’m now winning national championships, setting weightlifting world records, displacing women who’ve worked their entire lives to get to a point in their careers, I think that’s wrong."

"I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programmes that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age. I will then ask congress to permanently stop federal tax-payer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these procedures and pass a law prohibiting child-sexual mutilation in all 50 states – it’ll go very quickly. I will declare that any hospital or healthcare provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare and will be terminated from the programme immediately. Furthermore I will support the creation of a private right of action for victims to sue doctors who have unforgivably performed these procedures on minor children."

"HHS leaders on Thursday cited their own review of evidence and reports from other countries, many of which have faced sharp criticism for drawing sweeping conclusions with little or poor evidence. Health officials said they expect to emphasize psychosocial assessment and support for transgender youth, including “compassionate, developmentally appropriate counseling.” But they acknowledged that there are a limited number of mental health care providers available. Gender identity care, which is sometimes called gender-affirming care, is a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one a clinician assigned them at birth, based mostly on anatomic characteristics – to the gender by which they identify. It can include mental health care or age-appropriate medical care such as hormone treatments, puberty blockers, gynecologic and urologic care and reproductive treatments. Major mainstream medical associations – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – have supported such care and agree that it’s the gold standard of clinically appropriate care that can provide lifesaving treatment for children and adults. Professional medical organizations do not recommend surgery for children as a part of care, and research shows that it’s rare among transgender or gender-diverse teens."

"How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year."

"A New York Times bestseller that chronicles the true story of a nonbinary teenager set on fire by another teen while riding a bus in Oakland, California. A collection of stories and poems by a New York Times bestselling author about the feelings and experiences of teenagers in love. An NPR “best book of the year” award winner featuring authors and illustrators sharing personal stories about their conversations with their kids about race in America today. This is a small sampling of the kinds of books that have been marked for “quarantine” in school libraries run by the Defense Department’s Education Activity, or DoDEA. For months, officials atop this agency have been quietly flagging and banning dozens of books in response to President Donald Trump’s executiveorders requiring federal agencies to eliminate programs or materials related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The effect is that tens of thousands of kids in U.S. military families living on military bases worldwide no longer have access at their school libraries to celebrated and highly recommended books that happen to talk about LGBTQ+ people and people of color."

"So, what have Republican legislators done? Let me count the ways. They introduced nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills. They’re also banning books, which we know. And teachers in states like Florida are barred from even talking about being gay or transgender in the classroom."

"I'll tell you my priority. Protect religious liberty. Protect people of faith. And protect Americans who believe in the true meaning of marriage. I hope and pray that my colleagues will find the courage to join me in opposing this misguided and this dangerous bill."

"The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that it will challenge the administration’s rules in court. “These gratuitous proposals are cruel and unconstitutional attacks on the rights of transgender youth and their families,” Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Rights Project, said in a statement. Kennedy said Thursday that the administration is confident it’s approach will pass court challenges. “If people sue us, they’re welcome to,” he said. The HHS announcement came just after the House passed a bill that could imprison health care providers for providing trans care for minors. The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, could imprison doctors who provide care such as surgeries or puberty blockers for up to 10 years. It’s unclear whether the GOP-led Senate will take up the measure, though it is unlikely it would get enough Democratic support to pass out of that chamber."

"Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken out against retiring 988’s specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth, including Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin. She said in a statement Wednesday that the Trump administration’s plan to cut the specialized services comes at a time when it is estimated that nearly 40% of LGBTQ+ young people have reported seriously considering attempting suicide in the past year. In 2019, Baldwin, along with Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO), Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Jack Reed (D-RI), introduced the legislation to designate a three-digit phone number for a national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline. “I worked hard to stand up a special line for LGBTQ+ youth because we are losing too many of our kids to suicide, and it’s well past time we did something about it. Children facing dark times and even contemplating taking their life often have nowhere else to turn besides this 988 Lifeline, and the Trump Administration is cruelly and needlessly taking that away,” Baldwin said in the statement. “During Pride Month, a time to celebrate the progress we’ve made, the Trump Administration is taking us a step back and telling LGBTQ+ kids that they don’t matter and don’t deserve help when they are in crisis,” Baldwin said. “This is not the final chapter of this story, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to protect these children.”"

"“On July 17, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will no longer silo LGB+ youth services, also known as the ‘Press 3 option,’ to focus on serving all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press 3 option,” SAMHSA’s statement said Tuesday. “The Press 3 option was established as a pilot program in Fiscal Year 2022 under a government agreement with a third party. The Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus included a Congressional directive for $29.7 million to fund the specialized services. Federal funding in FY24 for the Press 3 services increased to $33 million,” the statement said. “As of June 2025, more than $33 million in funds have been spent to support the subnetworks, fully expending the monies allocated for 988 Lifeline LGB+ subnetwork services.” In October 2020, President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill making 988 the universal telephone number to reach the national suicide prevention hotline."

"Knowing that your governor and the top officials in your state literally don't want you to exist – That's a different kind of stress. It felt very genocidal [in Texas]."

"The reason we are singling out drag performances is there are drag performances out there that are targeting children, and that needs to stop. The problem is that children are being targeted in many areas, and it is evil against good... and we’ve got to push back on evil. I will do everything I can as a senator in this chamber to protect Arizona children from perversion (and) grooming."

"I'm with the President on this! If passed, this bill will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy."

"I'm looking at society today and it's like I'm watching an X-Men movie… it's like we have mutants living among us on planet Earth. Some people don’t like that, but that’s a fact. This is the planet Earth, where God created men, male and women, female. I’m a proud Christian, conservative Republican. I’m not on the fence… I'm not afraid to address the dysphoria or the dysfunction. The Lord rebuke you, Satan, and all of your demons and all of your imps will come and parade before us. That's right – I called you demons and imps who come and parade before us and pretend that you are part of this world."

"The explosion of legislation is in part the culmination of efforts by a trio of conservative organizations, which are helping state legislators write and promote the bills. One of the most active — the — has a decades-long history of fighting LGBTQ rights, including in battles to preserve state laws criminalizing consensual sex between gay adults, court records show."

"For the good of society ... transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level."

"When the human soul has lost its strength through laziness, incredulity, and the gangrenous vices that follow an excess of civilization, it can be retempered only in blood. Certainly there is no easy explanation of why war produces different effects in different circumstances. But it can be seen clearly enough that mankind may be considered as a tree which an invisible hand is continually pruning and which often profits from the operation. In truth the tree may perish if the trunk is cut of the tree is overpruned; but who knows the limits of the human tree? What we do know is that excessive carnage is often allied with excessive population, as was seen especially in the ancient Greek republics and in Spain under the Arab domination."

"It is from the shadow of a cloister that there emerges one of mankind's greatest very greatest scourges. Luther appears; Calvin follows him. The Peasants' Revolt; the Thirty Years' War; the civil war in France; the massacre of the Low Countries; the massacre of Ireland; the massacre of the Cévennes; St Bartholomew's Day; the murders of Henry II, Henry IV, Mary Stuart, and Charles I; and finally, in our day, from the same source, the French Revolution."

"Now the real fruits of human nature – the arts, sciences, great enterprises, lofty conceptions, manly virtues – are due especially to the state of war. […] In a word, we can say that blood is the manure of the plant we call genius."

"This makes me think that the French Revolution is a great epoch and that its consequences, in all kinds of ways, will be felt far beyond the time of its explosion and the limits of its birthplace."

"Unhappily, history proves that war is, in a certain sense, the habitual state of mankind, which is to say that human blood must flow without interruption somewhere or other on the globe, and that for every nation, peace is only a respite."

"Men gather the clouds, and then they complain of the tempests that follow."

"If Providence erases, it is no doubt in order to write."

"Our descendants, who will worry very little about our sufferings and will dance on our graves, will laugh at our present ignorance; they will easily console themselves for the excesses that we have seen and that will have preserved the integrity of 'the most beautiful realm after that of heaven'."