Leftist organization Together Rising is investing money and raising funds to help transgender youth advocacy organizations in Florida after the Sunshine State passed a bill prohibiting gender theory from being taught from kindergarten to third grade.
“There’s no such thing as other people’s children,” the group claims, following a longstanding narrative from leftists that children do not belong to their parents, but rather to the community as a whole and are effectively wards of the state.
The communitarian argument for raising children comes directly out of the “Black Lives Matter at School” playbook, which advocates the disruption of the “Western nuclear family” in favor of the “black village.”
“Black Villages is the disruption of the Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the ‘collective village’ that takes care of one another,” the “Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles” states.
In a blog post titled “WE SAY GAY” — a reference to the false narrative pushed by establishment media and other leftists that Florida’s bill would ban persons from saying the word gay, calling it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — the group points out three Florida-based organizations to which it will donate $150,000. Together Rising claims it is acting “in response to the attack on queer families in Florida” and in support of “LGBTQIA2S+ youth across Florida.”
“Compass Community Center is a queer-led, deeply-respected community center in Palm Beach County that serves LGBTQ+ youth, starting at age 3,” the post states.
“JASMYN is a women-led, nonprofit serving LGBTQ+ youth ages 13 to 29 in Jacksonville, Florida,” it continues. “They support teens interested in creating their own gender and sexuality alliance at school.”
The group also appears to be supporting extremely radical organizations in Texas, which it believes is also posing a threat to “transgender youth.”
“Founded by community activists, [Kind Clinic] in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio provides gender-affirming medical care to transgender youth, including hormone replacement therapy for those ages 16 and up, in concert with a pediatric endocrinologist,” the group said on Twitter [emphasis added].
“[LGBTQ SAVES] is a queer-led, grassroots nonprofit based in Dallas-Fort Worth. A ‘community where all youth are safe,’ they offer direct services to youth ages 14 to 24, such as gender-affirming haircuts, clothing, and shapewear, and educational resources for parents & educators,” the Twitter thread continued [emphasis added].
The roots of the communitarian argument are not new to the left and were on full display in Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book, It Takes a Village, in which she argues, “Each of us plays a part in every child’s life: It takes a village to raise a child”:
I chose that old African proverb to title this book because it offers a timeless reminder that children will thrive only if their families thrive and if the whole of society cares enough to provide for them. Soon after I began writing, a friend sent me the cartoon on this page, which I think about every time I hear someone say that children are not the responsibility of anyone outside their family.
“How well we care for our own and other people’s children isn’t only a question of morality; our self-interest is at stake too,” Clinton continued.
Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.