MATT OLBERDING and DEENA WINTER / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 7:00 pm
A minor $1,500 suicide prevention grant caused some major controversy during City Council and County Board meetings this week.
The reason: The focus of the grant was gay and lesbian teenagers, and the original grant funding would have been funneled through a gay-rights advocacy group.
Both the council and County Board approved the grant, but not before some vigorous debate and amendments aimed at de-emphasizing the gay and lesbian focus.
The grant was one of eight approved by a joint city-county board to be funded out of keno proceeds but the only one that was questioned by either body.
Originally, the keno money was designated toward Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays to identify and assist gay and lesbian youths.
But both the council and County Board amended their resolutions to award the contract directly to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Health Center to find or develop the education program and to broaden the scope to include other high-risk groups.
Lincoln-Lancaster County Human Services Administrator Kit Boesch said PFLAG was tapped to apply for the grant so it could lend its nonprofit status to the effort.
The inclusion of PFLAG led to some letters and e-mails to council and County Board members alleging the group has a hidden agenda of “recruitment and retention.”
Councilman Dan Marvin said he took the one letter-writer’s advice and researched PFLAG and “didn’t see anything remotely bad about it.” He would have supported the original proposal.
“It really irritates me that that’s the direction we’re still at in this day and age,” he said.
Councilwoman Robin Eschliman and County Commissioner Bob Workman disagreed, and even removing PFLAG as the grant recipient was not enough to garner their support.
Eschliman voted against the resolution Monday, saying it was controversial and “causes grief” to use tax dollars to fund gay and lesbian issues.
She said she’d rather give the money to something less controversial because people with “deeply held traditional family values” don’t want their tax dollars used for such causes, and she suggested the UNL Health Center could raise money to create the program.
Workman, who was the lone County Board member to vote against the amended resolution Tuesday, took a similar view.
“I believe this type of government funding can undermine traditional family values,” he said.
When told by a fellow board member the grant did not come from tax dollars but from money spent on keno, Workman angrily responded that there is no difference.
“These are government funds,” he said.
Workman, who got into heated exchanges with Boesch and fellow board members, called approving the grant “wrong” and said the board was being “duped.”
Boesch defended the grant, saying the money would be used to create an “education module” for area professionals to help high-risk homosexual kids who are depressed and suicidal.
She said the keno money and other grants will be used to hold four seminars, create a Web site and put together materials for professionals.
Boesch said area professionals are clamoring for such a curriculum, and she expects 200 professionals to use it.
She said the area has good programs in place but needs materials for “hard-to-work-with kids.”
“The hard-to-work-with kids are controversial,” she said. “Sure this is controversial. So are those kids and doggone it, we need to make a stand and say this is important.”
Reach Matt Olberding at 473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com. Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.