At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Chris Howard pressed Tom Kelem about the proposed fiscal sponsor of an LGBTQ+ Resource Database that the county had prior granted a Mental Health Service Act contract to. This was due to Queer Humboldt (the aforementioned fiscal sponsor) having values that are “anti-racist, anti-colonialist.” Supervisor Howard bombarded Mr. Kelem with questions about what exactly those values meant, expressing concern that they were hypocritical due to the county funding them. This implies that the county government of Del Norte County is pro-settler colonialism, and that threats to colonialist values will not be tolerated.
Kelem responded to the questioning that “he wasn’t there when they made those ideas.” He then defended Queer Humboldt, as they are non-profit organization willing to be the fiscal sponsor for this endeavor, that are also involved in LGBT issues, he stated that “that seemed like a really good fit to me.” Howard would not take this answer however, and then proceeded to seemingly cow the rest of the Board to not second the motion or ask any further questions. This deprives the LGBTQ+ community of Del Norte comprehensive and easy access to mental health services and resources in our area. In an already isolated community, this exacerbates the issue of feeling alone and unable to find help in Del Norte County.
In an article from The Trevor Project published December 15th, 2021 the following statistics are lined out.
- LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. (Johns et al., 2019; Johns et al., 2020)
- The Trevor Project estimates that more than 1.8 million LGBTQ youth (13-24) seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S. — and at least one attempts suicide every 45 seconds.
- The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth.
The article continues to state many other statistics including how social support and practices supporting LGBTQ+ youth help curb that rate significantly. Supervisor Howard claimed during the April 26th Candidate forum that he is in favor of providing mental health services for our community, and yet when an opportunity arises to do so for an underserved population he strikes it down due to colonialist sentiment. While Supervisor Chris Howard led the questioning, no other Supervisor spoke up in defense of Mr. Kelem or the program. When one does not speak up against acts of prejudice they are no better than the one who has prejudiced.
