For nearly a decade, the federal government has funded a nonprofit group that works to educate minors about sex toys, while discouraging them from telling their parents about it. The Center for Innovative Public Health Research has received more than $22 million in federal money since 2016. According to its website, the group creates “health education programs” that “promote positive human development.” But the content of those programs—and the comments of the organization’s CEO, Michele Ybarra—suggest that CIPHR’s “human development” goals are anything but positive.
Take Girl2Girl. Launched in 2017 and run by CIPHR, it’s a federally funded “sex ed program just for teen girls who are into girls.” Its website allows users—mostly between ages 14 and 16, according to one study—to sign up for “daily text messages . . . about things like sex with girls and boys.”
Finally, a reason to check your email.
Sign up for our free newsletter today.
The content of those messages raises serious concerns. According to the program’s website, Girl2Girl texts minors about “lube and sex toys,” “the different types of sex and ways to increase pleasure,” and “what it’s like growing up as [a] teen girl who is into girls.” The site also encourages participants to make their “own decision[s] about whether to take part in the research”—and explicitly advises them not to tell their parents if they’d prefer not to.
In 2023, CIPHR launched Transcendent Health, a sex-education program for minors who identify as transgender. The initiative, which received a $1.3 million federal grant that expired last month, conducted “focus group discussions with gender minority teens across the country.” To participate in the focus group, teens had to fill out a form asking whether they had had sex “with a transgender guy” or “with a non-binary person.”
Spearheading these projects is CIPHR’s CEO, Ybarra, who has shown little respect for parental rights. In a 2022 Brown University webinar, for example, Ybarra noted how her researchers prepare “young person[s]” for her focus groups. “If we’re doing focus groups,” she said, “we will ask, ‘Okay, so what happens if somebody comes into the room and sees words like penis and sex toys on your screen—on your computer screen or on your phone? What if it’s your mom?’”
Ybarra has a long history of such disturbing work. In 2017, she presented the results of a survey that CIPHR administered, which asked kids aged 14 to 16 whether they had had “receptive anal sex” or “insertive anal sex.” In the 2022 webinar, she added that she and her research team “wanted to know a bit more about when and why and where trans kids are choosing to have sex.”
The federal government should not fund programs that send sexually explicit messages to minors and encourage them to conceal these communications from parents. To protect children and prevent further harm, the Department of Health and Human Services should immediately cancel CIPHR’s active contract and deny its future grant applications. By doing so, the Trump administration can send a clear message: taxpayers will no longer foot the bill for perverted “research” projects.
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images News via Getty Images
City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).
Source link
