Threatening to harm children by defunding the NCMEC
If you missed the news over the weekend, and if you’re only watching mainstream outlets, you might very well have missed it, the President’s Executive Orders have forced the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to remove all information about LGBTQ kids or risk losing all of their government funding.
Whether or not you voted for this party, I want you to understand what this means.
As Marisa Kabas, who should be credited with bringing all of this to light, points out, the NCMEC website no longer talks about the increased risk of trafficking to LGBTQ+ youth. They can no longer provide resources and education about those risks or information about how to support those kids. They are even expected to dead-name missing trans kids in all announcements.
They are leaving LGBTQ+ kids behind. The alternative to doing that was not to have funding to run the only reporting agency for online CSAM, the clearinghouse used by many online services and law enforcement agencies to combat CSAM and trafficking, and the primary source of information about missing children in the US.
The administration was willing to stop that work because they did not want anyone to talk about trans people. I know some of you may have been voting Republican because of the tales of child trafficking that they mostly made up. The issue is so important to you that you’ll look away from all other matters, but I want you to read this because I think Mike Masnick describes the lies and hypocrisy well:
But wait, that’s not all. While they were demanding NCMEC toss LGBTQ children aside, they did stop funding for many international efforts to prevent trafficking:
US Funding Cuts Are Helping Criminals Get Away With Child Abuse and Human Trafficking.
They lied to you. They promised they were protecting children. They’re still talking about protecting children from “woke gender policies.” They are only interested in money and power, so much so that they are willing to let children die by the thousands at the hands of traffickers and abusers. Children will die and be abused outside of the US, and more LGBTQ+ children in the US will suffer similar fates because we have stopped doing the things that help fight it. They chose to stand by instead of helping vulnerable children.
They don’t care. Many of us know people who don’t care. If you’re one of them, I hope you can find some compassion in your heart someday, but understand what is happening right now. These policies are causing harm.
