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January 18, 2021

(NOT FOR RELEASE, ADVANCE PERMISSION REQUESTED)

CDC Covering Up its Pro-Homosexual Agenda

Records Reveal the Agency Has Spent Untold Millions Glorifying Homosexuality

Eugene Delgaudio

President, Public Advocate of the United States

In October of 2019, Public Advocate submitted a FOIA request to the Center for Disease Control ("CDC"), requesting records related to a CDC video series entitled "Start Talking. Stop HIV." The purported purpose of these videos was to "encourag[e] ... communication [and] prevention" of HIV, but in reality the video series was designed to unabashedly and unashamedly promote and glorify the homosexual lifestyle.

Various videos within the CDC series depict homosexuals - nearly always men - cross-dressing, holding hands, hugging, kissing, intimately touching, "grinding" (dancing), playing footsie, "flirting," engaged in "foreplay," exchanging condoms, getting married, lying in bed together, adopting children, and in various states of undress. For years, these CDC videos have been aired as advertisements on left-wing social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. They have also been funded by your tax dollars. Thank you for your contribution to the homosexual lifestyle.

Although the CDC's pro-homosexual video series was first commissioned during the Obama administration, the CDC apparently made no changes to this radical program when President Trump took office. In fact, neither the 2017 change in presidential administrations nor the 2018 confirmation of a new CDC director has had any observable effect on the CDC's mission. If anything, CDC staff has doubled down, continuing to create, promote, and fund its pro-homosexual agenda while President Trump is busy with fighting off attacks.

Although Executive Branch bureaucrats are supposed to work for the President, furthering the President's political priorities, these days that is the exception, not the rule. But bureaucrats are most certainly not supposed to use their positions to further their own radical social agenda. President Trump repeatedly made clear that he supports traditional marriage, opposes so-called homosexual "marriage," and that conservatives and Christians should not be force fed radical homosexuality. For example, President Trump's Department of Justice has filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court, arguing that Catholic adoption agencies should be free to turn away homosexual applicants.

Yet the CDC's video series supports all of these elements of the radical homosexual agenda. The CDC video series, then, is a slap in the face to the President and his priorities, and seems designed to undermine his efforts to uphold and preserve traditional marriage and protect conservative Christian values.

CDC's Response to Public Advocate's FOIA Request

In response to Public Advocate's 2019 FOIA request, the CDC did what any government agency would do when caught with its pants down, so to speak. First, the CDC claimed that Public Advocate's request was "overly broad" - a common tactic used to delay a FOIA response. Then, the CDC demanded that Public Advocate pay $6,000 before the agency would process our request. Each CDC communication claimed that, if Public Advocate did not respond within just a few days, our request would be closed - in spite of the CDC's own regulations requiring at least 20 business days for such notice.

Of course, Public Advocate's lawyers objected to the CDC's outrageous demand for payment, filing an "administrative appeal" of the agency's decision, explaining that Public Advocate was entitled to both a "public interest" and "media" waiver of all fees. What did the CDC do in response? It simply ignored our appeal, refusing to give us an answer until we were left with no choice but to file suit in early 2020. By then, the CDC had already achieved a delay of five months.

After Public Advocate filed suit to have a judge order the CDC to turn over records, the agency again switched tactics, this time blaming COVID-19 for the agency's delay, even though our request had been filed long before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19. You can't make this stuff up.

Next, the agency claimed that our quite simple records request had resulted in over 51,000 pages of potentially responsive records - an impossibly large and grossly inflated number designed to delay processing.

Finally, the CDC agreed to produce some records to Public Advocate, and told us how much the CDC spent on this misguided video series. In late October, just days before the election, Public Advocate finally received some answers from the CDC.

Results of Public Advocate's FOIA Request

The CDC has finally admitted that it has spent somewhere between $10.4 and $18.6 million dollars on its pro-homosexual video series. Apparently, the agency can't even figure it out. For some years, the amount spent has been rolled into a larger figure for "all consumer campaigns."

Of course, when Public Advocate asked repeatedly about the nature of these other "consumer campaigns," the CDC refused to tell us, which begs the question of what else the agency is hiding, and what other misguided efforts taxpayer dollars are funding.

What's more, the CDC's figures do not include the money spent on salaries, benefits, and other expenses to employ the CDC staff who have worked on the project.

As for the documents that the CDC unwillingly produced to Public Advocate, a full third of the documents have been completely withheld by the agency. For the remaining documents that were produced, the CDC has heavily redacted them, deleting literally every single bit of substantive information that would tell us anything about the program.

The CDC claims that this information is exempt as part of the agency's "deliberative process privilege." Yet as the DOJ explains, this exemption is "merely an option to deny access, not a prohibition against release," and recommends that "agencies should always consider whether as a matter of policy [information] should be withheld or released."

Well, it appears that the CDC's "policy" is to "Admit Nothing. Deny Everything," and to make it as difficult as possible for Public Advocate to uncover the truth. Some of the CDC's redactions aren't even marked, leading us to believe that they are being withheld under the special "we don't want you to see this" exemption.

At bottom, the CDC's pathetic response to Public Advocate's FOIA request hardly fulfills the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act, as stated by the Supreme Court - "to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed." Rather, the CDC's response smacks of a blatant attempt to cover up the truth.

A CDC "Director" Is Involved?

Unfortunately, the FOIA coverup of the CDC's pro-homosexual agenda appears to go straight to its leadership. On a September 11, 2020 call between Public Advocate's lawyers and CDC staff about the status of our FOIA request, CDC personnel let slip that "the director" had been involved in monitoring the agency's response to Public Advocate's FOIA request. Now, certainly, the CDC is a large agency, with many deputy and associate directors, so which "director" are they referring to? The CDC director Robert R. Redfield appointed by President Trump? Or perhaps Roger Andoh, J.D., the CDC FOIA Director?

We may never know, but CDC records confirm that one or more of CDC's higher-ups may have been "in the know" about the agency's pro-homosexual video series. An e-mail to CDC personnel dated March 28, 2019 reports that the video series has been "doing very well" and suggests that "we thought you could share the good news with leadership."[1] Was "leadership" brought into the loop as suggested? It is unclear, since the CDC redacted the pages both before and after this email.[2] What is clear, though, is that CDC does not want Public Advocate to find out what it has been up to.

CDC leadership either knew, or should have known, that the agency was spending millions of taxpayer dollars on a radical Obama-era program - purportedly to stop the spread of HIV - but in reality to promote and glorify the homosexual lifestyle.

Public Advocate will continue to dig for the truth on our end. Our lawyers will challenge the agency's redactions and withholdings. But in the meantime, President Trump should put an end to this disgraceful program. As the Christian Post notes, "there is a well-financed and detailed plan at work to change Americans' opinions about homosexual and lesbian lifestyles through television programming."[3] As the Parents Television Council states, "[t]oday's prime time television programming has become almost uniformly unsuitable for families, and often directly hostile to their values, making it very difficult for parents to shield their children and seek out alternative entertainment."[4]

It's bad enough that we (and more importantly, our children) get exposed to this from Hollywood. We don't need it from our government too. Americans should not be exposed to the government propaganda of two half-naked homosexuals lying in bed and kissing as a precondition to using YouTube and Facebook. Enough is enough. This is not about tolerance - it's about propaganda. It is time to put an end to the CDC's radical pro-homosexual agenda.

Eugene Delgaudio is president of Public Advocate of the United States, Inc. a non-profit policy group founded in 1978 under the 501.c 4 section of the IRS code.