LGBTQ+ community celebrates, but highlights need for mental health services and more support

Beneath the veneer of music, dance and food that took over a block of Fulton Street for the fourth annual LGBTQ+ Street Festival, there were warnings of danger for the LGBTQ+ community ranging from laws throughout the country that target the community to a lack of mental health services.

“Resources are needed now more than ever coming out of the pandemic,” said Fresno County Opportunities Commission executive director Emilia Reyes, whose organization opened the EOC LGBTQ+ Resource Center in 2019 after the original office in the Tower District shut its doors in 2017.

“We have seen social justice, unrest, violence against people because of their race, their culture and their gender,” said Reyes, who addressed the hundreds of people who showed up for Saturday’s ‘Illuminate Our Pride and Our Mental Health’ street fair.

The celebration – which included a drag show and a dunk tank – served as a state of the LGBTQ+ community.

Self-identifying LGBTQ community members spoke of being shunned by churches, finding little to no health insurance for transgender needs, and a lack of mental health services.

Cassie Hanlin, an attorney and Title IX deputy director at Fresno State, said more anti-LGBTQ legislation has been introduced nationally this year than in each of the previous five years.

“The Human Rights Campaign reports over 520 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures, a record,” said Hanlin. “Over 220 bills specifically target transgender and non-binary lives; again, a record.”

Seventy anti-LGBTQ laws have been enacted this year, according to Hanlin. A national state of emergency has been declared for LGBTQ Americans because of those laws.

community because of that legislation, she said.

“In moments like these, when the existence of our lives is not only debated but intentionally silenced, we must remember that we are not alone,” said Hanlin, who is waiting for female-to-nonbinary surgery. “We stand united as one.

“You deserve to be celebrated. You are worthy. Your existence is a gift, simply because you are so uniquely you and not anyone else.”

The Right Rev. David C. Rice, bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquín, said “our LGBTW brothers and sisters are an expression of God’s love. We cannot be a whole church without everyone.”

Rice said the opposite of love is fear, which explains the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from politicians and others.

“Judeo-Christian traditions have been predicated on fear for centuries,” said Rice. “And that fear has prompted the church to separate people on the margins from the church itself. I’m here to say to you that I’m sorry that has happened, and that I’m not part of a church and we’re not part of faith communities that do that.”

Xo Hernández, a facilitator for a Spanish-speaking trans feminine group, shared her personal experience.

“I grew up in a household where femininity wasn’t appreciated in a masculine body,” said Hernández. “So it took me a lot of years to accept myself, to love myself.”

Hernández came out as transgender feminine about a year ago after “hiding myself and not allowing myself to be my most authentic self.”

She said it is challenging to find mental health resources and meet someone “who would understand me and know my experience.”

“My body is still in that survival mode that I’ve been living for the last 27 years,” said Hernández.

Alex Jiménez, a farmworker who recently went to the EOC LGBTQ Recourse Center, said it is difficult to find services for Spanish speakers.

“I waited over 12 years to finally be able to make all of my physical changes,” said Jiménez, a transgender man originally from Oaxaca.

Through the EOC’s resource center, he obtained needed gender-affirming items.

Saturday’s event raised funds for the center through a dunk tank. A local drag show raised $3,500 for the center.

The center serves individuals in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, queer, HIV and questioning individuals in the county.

June is national LGBTQ+ Pride Month.

This story was originally published June 26, 2023 at 7:23 AM.