While President Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders aimed at cutting all federal aid to organizations that promote far-left, LGBTQ ideology, Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance has decided to actively solicit funds for nonprofits that push transgender ideology on some of Alaska’s most vulnerable youth.

In October, LaFrance plans to host the 31st annual Anchorage Mayor’s Charity Ball to raise community support for four groups, including Choosing Our Roots and Covenant House Alaska. These two organizations actively promote the notion that youth can change their sexual identity in order to identify as members of the opposite sex.

Choosing Our Roots is an Anchorage non-profit which targets LGBTQ homeless youth. Launched in 2019 with a focus on providing shelter for queer and transgender identifying teens and young adults. The group places youth – ages 13 to 24 – in what it calls volunteer “host home families,” which must affirm teens and young adults in their various chosen gender identities and expressions.

In addition to creating new queer-affirming family structures, the organization also puts young people in contact with local LGBTQ services and other social support agencies. In 2022, the organization helped to facilitate an irreversible double mastectomy on a gender confused young woman.

Likewise, Covenant House Alaska, which began as a Catholic outreach for Anchorage’s homeless and run-away youth – ages 13 to 24 – has rejected core moral tenets of its faith-based roots in favor of facilitating abortions, imposing strict LGBTQ mandates on staff and young clients and supporting sexual “transitions” for gender-confused youth.

Launched in 1994, by then-Mayor Rick Mystrom, the Mayor’s Ball has raised more than $4.1 million in support of local charities, who apply for the assistance.

The ball is led by a seven-member board of directors who oversee volunteers and evening activities, which include dinner, dancing, silent and live auctions, and miscellaneous fund-raising efforts.

According to the Ball website, it has sold out every year, and “is proud that its success through the years has transcended political lines, because it is about helping others and making a difference in Anchorage.”

That doesn’t appear to be the case this year, with the decision to utilize the gala to benefit groups that promote highly controversial notions that youth can “transition” from one sex to another through powerful cross-sex hormones, irreversible breast removals and genital surgeries. The devastating health consequences of these controversial interventions are well documented, and many European countries have now banned them for minors.

Upon discovering that Choosing Our Roots was chosen as a beneficiary of the Mayor’s Ball, the organization’s Co-Directors Laura Reijns and Chami Krueger sent out a note to supporters, blasting Trump’s executive orders, and celebrating the financial boost that the gala will afford their group.

“Whew! The past couple of weeks have been A LOT; Executive order after executive order after government website purge and on and on,” Reijns and Krueger wrote. “We all know that one man’s signature on a document cannot erase trans and gender non-conforming persons from existing now or ever. However, the language of being erased, disbelieved, and defamed still hurts. Many of our souls are exhausted and still wondering how we might affect positive change and speak up for our LGBTQIA2S+ and housing insecure friends and family.”

They defiantly noted that they are expanding LGBTQ friendly youth housing in the Mat-Su, while highlighting the Mayor’s Ball selection.

“…we were selected for the Mayor’s Charity Ball for this fall!” they wrote. “Our queer joy is radiant as we prepare for this time to celebrate all the persons who have helped get this non-profit here!”

The Choosing Our Roots leaders did note, however, that they may lose a $65,000 federal grant, now that Trump has issued a freeze on this type of expenditure of taxpayer dollars.

“It is really hard to know how to plan for the next few years,” Reijns and Krueger lamented. “As a group of queers trying to protect ourselves, friends, and families, we are all on high alert for the next hard news. We are tired, and we are all in need of more love, more community connection, and so much more queer joy, and yet it is not always clear where we can safely access those.”

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