FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — When LGBTQ Floridians, their families and their supporters arrive in the state capital Monday to start two days of what organizers are calling pride, passion and resistance, they’re more likely to encounter a brick wall of opposition than a welcome mat and an open door.
In the last two years, the rhetoric and policies flowing from Gov. Ron DeSantis, his administration, and the Republican-controlled state Legislature have left the LGBTQ community, along with family members, friends and employers anxious as they adjust to a new reality and wait to see what comes next from Tallahassee.
“They have just decided to demonize our community. They’re doing it with great success, and no one is stopping them,” said Rand Hoch, founder and president of the LGBTQ rights group Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, which for much of its 35-year existence has worked with — and endorsed — both Democrats and Republicans.
Stephen Gaskill, who in February wrapped up four years as president of the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus, said much of the change is caused by DeSantis’ desire to cater to primary voters in other states for his still-unofficial candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“He’s gone after the LGBTQ community in very personal terms. He’s denying our existence in schools. He’s denying LGBTQ+ kids. He’s denying our existence in books and other media. He’s denying us control over our own bodies and health decisions. He’s denying us life-saving medical care,” Gaskill said.
And warned Todd Delmay, a husband and father who is the new president of the Dolphin Democrats LGBTQ political club, “This toxicity, it’s now leaking. It’s not being contained in Florida. It’s now showing up everywhere.”
Agenda
Equality Florida, the statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization, is tracking more than a dozen bills covering a range of issues in the annual legislative session, which started Tuesday and is scheduled to run through May 5.
—Schools. The 2022 “Parental Rights in Education” law — derided by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law — prohibits instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade, and limits it in older grades. This year’s proposal would extend the law through eighth grade and no one in a school could be required to use a student’s preferred pronouns.
—Drag shows. The state would crack down on drag shows by penalizing businesses that admit children to events deemed “adult live” performances. Drag shows have become a popular target of the right on social media and Republicans in government, many of whom argue that they “groom” children.
—Transgender care. Several bills have been introduced that deal with restricting gender-affirming care for transgender people, which opponents describe mutilation and child abuse. Most proposals focus on minors, but some could make it impractical for health insurance plans to cover care for adults as well. Floridians wouldn’t be allowed to amend their birth certificates to reflect anything other than their sex assigned at birth.
—Restrooms. Transgender people would be banned from using restrooms and changing rooms that fit their gender identity in a range of educational institutions and public accommodations.
—Rainbow flag. Government facilities would be prohibited from flying the LGBTQ rainbow flag.
Turnaround
The current outlook represents a fast and remarkable turnaround in the Florida political landscape.
“It is a course correction,” said Anthony Verdugo, founder and executive director of the Christian Family Coalition, based in Miami-Dade County. “People are sick and tired of having this ideology imposed on them, and then when they dare to disagree, they’re called homophobes and transphobes,” he said.
“Conservatives have found their voice” in DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, Verdugo said. “That’s what was missing. That’s what I think has changed the equation.”
A measure of the change: In 2008, state Sen. Jeff Atwater — a Palm Beach County Republican who was about to become the Florida Senate president and was later elected statewide chief financial officer — signed on as a co-sponsor of legislation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodations based on sexual orientation.
Atwater’s support secured passage in a Senate committee before the measure ultimately stalled.
“You can’t even bring a bill like that up now,” said state Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Miami Gardens Democrat and the only openly LGBTQ Florida state senator.
DeSantis
When DeSantis took office in 2019, it wasn’t immediately clear that Verdugo would get the kind of course correction he wanted.
Five months after DeSantis was sworn in, he appeared at an event to commemorate the victims of the mass shooting at Pulse, the Orlando LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 mass shooting.
He promised to sign off on $500,000 budgeted for a permanent memorial of the attack. And the governor shook hands at the event with Brandon Wolf, a shooting survivor whose two best friends were killed at Pulse. “It means a lot for you to be here, maybe more than you know,” Wolf told DeSantis.
Then-state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an LGBTQ Democrat, said it left him optimistic.
Two years later, DeSantis vetoed $150,000 in state funds to provide counseling for Pulse survivors along with funding to create housing for homeless LGBTQ youth. On the first day of LGBTQ Pride Month in June 2021, DeSantis signed legislation banning transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s school sports.
Wolf and Smith now work for Equality Florida — and have become fierce critics of DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature on LGBTQ issues.
“For the first 24 years of Equality Florida’s existence, we successfully blocked all explicitly anti-LGBTQ legislation from getting to the governor’s desk and being signed into law,” Wolf said via email. “Unfortunately, DeSantis and his brand of right-wing extremism have hollowed out those coalitions.”
Republicans counter
Julia Friedland, communications director for the Republican Party of Florida, said via email that the Republicans who control state governments are doing what the people want.
“Today’s Left encourages sex-change operations and hormone therapy for minors and complains that little kids don’t have access to pornographic books in taxpayer-funded schools. They’ve gone completely mad, while Republicans remain the voice of sanity for parents across the state,” she said.
Andrew Brett, a former president of the LGBTQ political club Broward Log Cabin Republicans, doesn’t see DeSantis as hostile.
“He’s not taking any rights away whatsoever,” Brett said, asserting that is a claim that “the left extremists” are attempting to sell. He is starting a new organization, South Florida G.A.Y. (Great America You) Conservatives.
He said DeSantis is protecting children by giving parents more say in schools and keeping them away from drag shows. “I personally think that parents who take their kids to these things [are guilty of] … child abuse, should be charged, and not be parents.”
Pride flag
The changed atmosphere extends to the rainbow flag, an internationally recognized symbol of LGBTQ pride.
On Feb. 28, a large rainbow flag painted on a side street just off the section of Fort Lauderdale beach widely known, and marketed as an LGBTQ beach, was defaced, something Mayor Dean Trantalis lamented as a sign of the “creeping level of hate that’s starting to materialize.” The action was applauded by some on social media.
Verdugo said the flag shouldn’t have been painted on the street in the first place.
“I don’t agree with vandalism or violence or defacing property at all. What it goes to show you is the frustration that exists among many in the population,” he said. “If you’re going to paint a rainbow flag on the street then you’ve got to pick another street and paint the Christian flag” as well as flags for Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, he said.
Legislation sponsored by state Rep. David Borrero, a Miami-Dade County Republican, would allow only U.S., state of Florida, POW-MIA and firefighter memorial flags. “No other flag may be exposed to public view for exhibition or display, in any manner, by a governmental agency, local government, or unit of local government,” the legislation states. Neither he nor state Sen. Jay Collins, a Hillsborough County Republican, and sponsor of another flag bill responded to emailed questions about why they’re sponsoring the legislation.
Delmay said the flag flying during June Pride Month and other occasions at City Hall in Hollywood, where he lives, has been inspirational. “It’s for the people that see it that we will never know, who, even for a moment, felt seen by city government and who felt respected in the place where they lived,” he said.
Decades of gains
The change in Florida, and in many other states, comes after a period of extraordinary gains for LGBTQ people, including the ability to adopt children and the right to get married.
“Some people may not have anticipated a backlash,” Delmay said. “To some degree, the whole community got very comfortable and felt we’ve won marriage, we’re done. But it’s not just the win, it’s protecting the win.”
Fred Fejes, a professor emeritus at Florida Atlantic University, said LGBTQ people are in a “far stronger, healthier place” than they were decades ago. “We have people in public office. We have organizations, institutions,” he said.
Fejes is, the author of “Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America’s Debate on Homosexuality,” which deals with the rise of Anita Bryant’s 1970s fight against gays in Miami-Dade County and the aftermath, and is working on “Queer By the Beach,” a forthcoming book about the LGBTQ community in Fort Lauderdale.
He said LGBTQ people should be “very concerned” about what’s happening in Florida, but not panic. Hoch, however, said he is “extremely pessimistic.”
Jones, whose father is the founder and senior pastor of a large church in South Broward, said the pendulum will swing back. “The arc will always bend back toward justice. And while the Republicans may think they’re winning, the oppressed always win in the end.”
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