Taxpayer-Funded Group Indoctrinates Kids as Young as 2 in Transgender Ideology

Taxpayers have given $234 million to an early childhood development organization that promotes introducing infants to transgender ideology by the age of three. It also held a special “Drag Bingo” event for educators and interventionists who attended its most recent conference.

The organization Zero to Three, which trained more than 89,000 professionals who interact with the youngest children last year, encouraged attendees to “support” transgender children whose “process begins” as early as “ages 2-3.”

Its virtual conference from September 12-15 included an “introductory-level” presentation titled “Healthy Gender Identity Development In Young Children: What Does It Mean To Be Transgender And How Can You Support Kids Who Might Be?” Its description states, “This Issue Intensive addresses the development of gender identity, including how early the process begins (ages 2–3) and how parents and professionals can distinguish gender exploration with the emergence of a transgender identity.”

Far from presenting itself as a radical LGBTQ pressure group, Zero to Three is “the go-to membership group for early childhood educators — and these are educators who go to houses and work with young children before they even go into preschool,” Patrick Hauf, a Washington Free Beacon journalist who first reported the session, told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Tuesday. “This is the earliest level of education a kid is going to get from a teacher, and these teachers are being directed to identify transgenderism with two-year-olds.”

Promoting transgender “identity doesn’t just start in kindergarten,” Hauf told Perkins. “It starts before kindergarten or preschool. It starts in your home when you hire a private early childhood educator” — a situation he said was “unheard of a year ago.”

Zero to Three explains that it focuses on a child’s first 36 months, because that timeframe makes a critical impact on impressionable children. “Infants and toddlers are ready to absorb new information [and] environments,” its website states. “Those earliest days, weeks, and months are at the core of Zero to Three’s work as the premier organization translating the brain science of early childhood into a better world for babies and toddlers.” Scientists agree that brain development in a child’s first few years will “create the foundations for all learning and development later in life.”

Zero to Three is not the only social force training adults to introduce infants to the idea that they may be transgender. A mandatory class in the University of Wisconsin system forces future teachers to read a chapter titled “Just Another Gay Day in the Campus Three-Year-Old Room,” which tells students to include LGBTQ “lessons with a three-year-old day care center,” found Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL). But Zero to Three may be the most successful — and well-financed.

Its 2021 impact report boasts that it has reached “350,000+ children reached nationwide” — much of which was financed by taxpayers at all levels of government. The report says 46% of the group’s nearly $49 million in revenue comes from taxpayer-funded “federal and state government grants and contracts.” In all, Hauf reported, Department of Health and Human Services has given Zero to Three $234.68 million since 2008, and taxpayers are scheduled to give the organization another $52 million over the next five years.

“They just got a new grant from HHS this month in September” totaling $4.2 million, Hauf told Perkins. He believes the financial spigot may be shut off if officials “face enough pressure.”

However, the financial commitment reflects the Biden administration’s stated desire to support extreme gender ideology. Biden’s HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, who was born Richard, has maintained since at least 2014 that a child’s transgender ideology begins as early as age three or four. That view has only hardened now that Levine wields fiscal and political power. “We really want … to affirm and to support and empower these youth not to limit their participation in activities in sports and even limit their ability to get gender affirmation treatment in their state,” Levine told MSNBC in July.

“The reality is that this ideology has permeated so many of our universities,” said Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council, later in the show. “Every field has been touched by this ideology. And we need to equip our people to be ready to face this ideology with love and truth.”

The group also has profound influence among professionals in the field, training 89,222 people last year alone. Zero to Three displayed its idea of how early childhood development specialists should relax on the first day of its conference, boasting, “We also know how to have a good time! We’re playing Virtual Drag Bingo. … So much fun and laughs!” 

But the most profound — and potentially disastrous — results affect vulnerable children. Teenagers have reported profound regret after being fast-tracked for life-altering, sterilizing, “gender-affirming” surgeries. “A two-year-old is not thinking about having some kind of gender procedure, but they’re getting into that pipeline,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

The lifelong effects of “top” and “bottom” surgery are the more heartbreaking, as they offer a permanent consequence to an often temporary condition. Between 88% and more than 90% will grow out of this condition by adulthood. Furthermore, one study found that 39% of those who stopped identifying as transgender had met the guidelines to qualify as transgender under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR).

“It’s important as others are affirming a false identity that we need to go out of our way, as parents and as a community of believers, to affirm our young people in who they are,” Bauwens told Perkins.

“Transing a child is never the answer.”