The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, which controls hundreds of millions of dollars, has decided to spend public resources to help boost nonprofits groups that push transgender ideology on some of Alaska’s most vulnerable youth.
On March 19, the Trust announced that it has awarded $1.84 million to various nonprofits that offer services for those experiencing mental illness or disease, developmental disorders, substance abuse or traumatic brain injuries.
Two of the award recipients – Choosing Our Roots and Covenant House Alaska – actively promote the notion that vulnerable youth can change their sexual identity to identify as members of the opposite sex.
Choosing Our Roots is an Alaska non-profit that targets LGBTQ homeless youth. Launched in 2019, it focuses 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.
Choosing Our Roots received $125,000 from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority grant, while Covenant House took in $310,000.
The Trust’s grant program is a core component of its mission, which is supposed to help care for Alaskans experiencing mental illness, substance misuse, intellectual and developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, and Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
In announcing the grant winners, Trust CEO Mary Wilson lauded their work.
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“By investing in critical infrastructure, direct services, and more, we are helping our community partners build stronger, more inclusive environments where all Trust beneficiaries have the opportunity to thrive,” she said.
The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority is a state corporation that administers the Mental Health Trust, a perpetual trust created by the Alaska Legislature in 1994 to ensure that Alaska has a comprehensive mental health program to serve those in need. The Trust operates much like a private foundation, using its vast resources to award grants to various organizations across the state.
As a component unit of the State of Alaska, it consists of a seven-member board of trustees that is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Alaska Legislature. It operates as a political subdivision of the state, which grants it tax-exempt status under state and federal law.
The Trust Land Office resides within the Department of Natural Resources and is contracted exclusively by the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority to manage its approximately one million acres of land and other non-cash assets to generate revenue.
TAKING ACTION
— The next Board of Trustees meeting is scheduled for May 20. Click here for details on how to participate.
— Emails to the trustees can be sent to public.comment@mhtrust.org. For more information on how to communicate with trustees, click here.
6 Comments
This is NOT ok! All funding for any mutilation of children should be pulled, and these organizations investigated.
This article is written to provoke fear, not to inform.
Notice the language: “push gender-queer ideology,” “vulnerable youth,” “opposite sex,” and “gender-confused.” That is not neutral reporting. It is loaded wording designed to frame support services for homeless and at-risk young people as some kind of moral threat.
The real question should be much simpler: are these organizations helping vulnerable youth stay alive, housed, fed, and connected to services, or are they not?
Choosing Our Roots and Covenant House are working with young people who are often homeless, rejected, abused, struggling with mental health issues, or living in unsafe situations. Pretending that these youths do not exist, or that the only acceptable help is help conditioned on rejecting who they say they are, is not compassion. It is ideology dressed up as concern.
The article also tries to turn any affirming care or support into something sinister by using culture-war language instead of facts. Supporting LGBTQ youth does not somehow disqualify an organization from serving vulnerable people. In many cases, it is exactly why those youth trust them enough to seek shelter and help in the first place.
And the repeated use of terms like “gender-confused” says more about the author’s bias than it does about the young people being discussed. These are human beings, not talking points.
If someone wants to argue about how public grants should be awarded, fine. That is a legitimate debate. But then have that debate honestly: talk about outcomes, accountability, services provided, and whether the money helps people. Do not smear organizations that serve homeless youth by reducing their work to a caricature.
A society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable people. Helping homeless and struggling youth find safety and support is not the scandal here. Turning them into political targets is.
Tim R – you bought up a lot of mental health issues that get assistance from the supporting entities within your dissertation.
My reply will be on the main issue of the article:
Our ‘feel goods’ are far too often tapped to accept what is not healthy.
Acceptance requirement: You are expected to give up long-established mores held by most of society. If they weren’t held by most of society, they would change through necessity of adjustment and NOT through GUILT.
We are now expected to accept a mental health issue that has become a publicized trend. The trans trend ignores logic and reason while requiring national attention to a ‘mental health issue’ that involves a small percentage of humanity. What is outrageous is that it includes the authorization of genital mutation of children.
Children, who because of societal mores are not allowed the right to drink, smoke, do drugs and have adult sex.
And why are children ‘not allowed’ ? You do the math.
Just say NO.
Very compassionate and persuasive TimR.
Once again Dunleavy is behind the perversion being forced into our children!!!
You could be totally correct. With the new governor coming on in a matter of months after the voting, there will definitely be a change in commissioners in every state department. Dunleavy is all fraud, waste and abuse. Using this Trust in such a manner was started by Lying, Mealy-mouthed Adam Crum under the Dunleavy administration and continues today biut should change with new state management. We’ll see!