Biden administration asks children about gender identity in tobacco youth survey
- October 23, 2023
Breccan F. Thies, Washington Examiner
The Biden administration is asking middle and high school children whether they question their gender in the National Youth Tobacco Survey.
While a 2020 change to the survey included asking children if they identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or “something else,” the 2023 version asks directly about identifying as “transgender.”
The survey is distributed every year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health, which is designed to track tobacco usage, beliefs, and corporate influence on tobacco use among middle and high school students.
“This appears to be yet another case of science taking a back seat to an agenda driven by special interests, which has become far too common in recent years,” Michael Chamberlain, the director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told the Washington Examiner. “While federal health officials decry the public’s loss of trust in their actions and decisions, they don’t seem very keen on looking in the mirror.”
Another question in the survey defines “sexual orientation” as “a person’s emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attraction to another person. There are many ways a person can describe their sexual orientation and many labels a person can use.”
The survey finally asks, “Which of these options best describes your sexual orientation?”, for which possible answers include “straight or heterosexual,” “gay or lesbian,” “bisexual, pansexual, or queer,” and “asexual.”