Two county departments approved to attend Fresno Pride after library staff blocked
Two Fresno County departments will be allowed to attend the Fresno Rainbow Pride parade and festival this year after the Board of Supervisors gave them blessings on Tuesday.
The board unanimously granted the request of Public Health Department Director Joe Prado a week after blocking the Fresno County Library’s request to attend and set up at a 10-by-10-foot booth at the festival at Fresno City College.
The attendance of Public Health employees, who last year passed out rainbow condoms and lube along with brochures, drew the ire of Supervisor Garry Bredefeld.
The meeting and the vote Tuesday on participation in Pride came and went with little conflict, a departure from the clash May 12 over the library’s attendance.
Bredefeld called the library’s potential attendance to Pride and displays inside the library “indoctrination” by a “political ideology,” referring to the LGBTQ+ community.
Along with approving the presence of the health department, the board also approved the request of Department of Behavioral Health.
“I do see a role for Public Health to be at this event, as well as at many events, disseminating important medical and clinical information to a wide variety of populations, including this population, and letting them know about the services that are provided as well” Bredefeld said. “And so I don’t have any objection to that for that reason, just as I did with Department of Behavioral Health.”
He repeated his objection to last year’s attendance by Public Health, saying they spent about $6,000.
Both department heads said they would pass out informational brochures at their respective booths this year. Each booth comes with a $125 fee.
The Public Health booth would be stocked with informational brochures, according to the request, that cover hepatitis C, HIV and HIV prevention, STD myths and testing, syphilis and monkeypox. Behavioral Health’s booth will provide educational materials on mental health, substance use and suicide prevention, according to that application.
Prado said Public Health tracks the incidence of many sexually transmitted infections, and which demographics are at risk.
“We just feel like the Pride event is a great event for us to get the education out and get some testing resources out there as well to be able to really educate the community about it,” Prado said.
The event could also be a good place to reach LGBTQ+ youth, who are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers, according to Susan Holt, director of Behavioral Health. Members of the community are also three times as likely to experience anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions.
The festival has been estimated to draw some 16,000 to 20,000 revelers from the San Joaquin Valley.
The county has a new higher bar to clear for holidays and observances that do not appear on the master list of holidays. Policies 80 and 81 govern what days of recognition can gain official support from the county and its employees when they are on the clock.
Books with LGBTQ+ themes have been a target of criticism in recent years by some county supervisors and their supporters.
County leaders tried before to ban books they viewed as inappropriate for children. The county approved a short-lived plan in 2023 to have a board of appointees judge certain books as inappropriate for children and restrict access to them.
The plan was nullified by Assembly Bill 1825, also known as the California Freedom to Read Act, which prevents books from being censored at public libraries. The county also cannot restrict how librarians display the books with LGBTQ+ themes during Pride.
Fresno County leaders resisted past calls to be inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community. The supervisors in 2023 adopted a policy that would not allow any flag other than the American and California flags to fly outside county buildings after Fresno city decided to raise the Pride flag outside City Hall.
