Marchers cheer during the Come Out With Pride Parade in downtown Orlando on Saturday, October 15, 2022. Thousands lined the streets for the yearly event supporting inclusion. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel) User Upload Caption:
Any comprehensive history of Pride Month starts with savagery and defiance — commemorating the first time the nation’s gay community openly mutinied against routine oppression and casual violence. The Stonewall Riots radiated from one small bar in Greenwich Village, which was, in the late 1960s, seen as one of the few tiny havens for LGBTQ+ Americans to live their lives with some degree of openness.
Even inside those confines, any kind of openly non-heterosexual behavior could put life and liberty at risk. That’s why gay-friendly establishments, including the Stonewall Inn, were owned or controlled by organized crime-syndicates. Yes, there was a time in American history when the Mafia did a better job of protecting individual rights than any governmental agency did.
Instead, governments across the nation served as oppressors, raiding gay-and-lesbian clubs or posing as potential sexual partners as a form of entrapment. For the most part, Florida was no different. But slowly, small bastions of liberty began to emerge. And they included Central Florida, where ex-military people were transitioning into the space program.
Pride’s beachhead in Florida
Orlando’s first gay nightclub, The Palace Club, opened the same year as the riots. When Disney’s Magic Kingdom opened its gates, the City Beautiful took on added allure as a safer — though still not safe — space for non-heterosexual Americans to love and live their lives. As documented by the LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida, a group of entrepreneurs known as the Gay and Lesbian Gang quickly established a series of nightclubs that included the iconic Parliament House. Within a decade of the Stonewall riots, Orlando saw its first Pride Picnic at Turkey Lake Park.
It still took decades to unwind Florida’s layers of hateful, oppressive laws. Every step felt hard-won: Stonewall-era law enshrined total bans on any expression of alternate sexuality. Some of those laws were not invalidated until the early 2000s, when a rapid tumble of landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings battered sexual-identity and orientation laws until they crumbled. And the ugliness never fully went away. Within the past few decades, Florida has seen cruel debates on whether LGBTQ people could adopt children, or marry.
The hearts and minds of Floridians, however, shifted much more quickly. By the turn of the century, most Sunshine State residents expressed support for civil unions and adoption rights. People flew rainbow flags and showed up for Pride demonstrations without fear.
Every step seemed to move things a little closer to a day when sexual orientation and non-gender-conformity were simply accepted as defining traits. When fear and hate were reviled and forced into the shadows, where love was welcome in the full light of day.
Florida saw the reflections of the fear and anger of the Greenwich Village riots shift to cheerful acceptance of sexuality in The Villages —- saw it as a change for the better. The surge of love and alliance after the massacre at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub helped heal hearts ripped apart by an openly acknowledged act of terrorism.
But as this Pride Month draws to a close, we must ask: How is it, in 2023, that we are sliding backward?
Back, to a day when providing gender-affirming care — or simply being transgender — could mean losing access to healthcare or even at risk of arrest and prosecution?
Back, to a time when Florida teachers are warned not to talk about sexuality with their students and innocent books that merely acknowledge the differences among families are outlawed?
Back, to a place where official government sources refer to gay people as “groomers” and suggest their mere existence puts children at risk of predatory behavior? Where the governor seems to obsessed by the mere existence of drag queens, and not in a healthy way?
This is nothing to be proud of.
So as Pride Month draws to a close, Floridians must make it clear: They are ready for this new fight to begin. They are ready to rebuke those who would force shame on people who yearned so long for the right to live in safety and with dignity.
They are ready to stand up for the right to love and be loved without fear once again — and be proud to do so.
Federal judge blocks Florida election law that would have set limits on voter registration
A federal judge on Monday blocked a Florida election law that would have set limits on voter registration in the state.
Thank you Ten Bears for posting this. I have been trying to figure out how to address the Clinton socks case for a while, yet she does it perfectly. The entire post is an example of how to address the right wing on all of this. Hugs
I thank MPS for addressing this. This group is pushing a very harmful cancer on tolerance and acceptance with the idea of killing both. I see this group and those like them cooperating with the right’s deep drive to return the US to a time like what they think the 1950s were. They are desperate to return to a time when white straight males were automatically in charge, and women were subservient to men keeping the men’s home while being sex objects. At that time there were no civil rights for minorities, so black people knew their place and were expected to stay there. And the LGBTQ+ community were in the closet and terrified to be found out as the consequences were terrible such as loss of housing or unemployment, while they were not represented in society except as villains and depraved sick people. That is the society these people on the right, the fundamentalist Christian nationalist white supremacist want to recreate. They think every one agrees with them, and they always claim to be talking for everyone in America. The truth is they are a minority that is now facing a huge backlash and need to be removed from all the places they wormed into in government and authority over education. Hugs
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” group that has sought to take over school boards in multiple states, is looking to expand those efforts across the country and to other education posts in 2024 and beyond. The effort is setting up a clash with teachers unions and others on the left who view the group as a toxic presence in public schools.
The group’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, said during its annual summit over the weekend in Philadelphia that Moms for Liberty will use its political action committee next year to engage in school board races nationwide. It also will “start endorsing at the state board level and elected superintendents.”
Pete Buttigieg mocks Ron DeSantis for trying to ‘prove’ his ‘manhood’
The transportation secretary, who is openly gay, criticized a video reposted by DeSantis’ team that goes after Trump on LGBTQ issues and features images of “shirtless bodybuilders.”
Well the super-red and highly politicized Supreme Court is at it again, and, as is always the case, things are now worse for many average Americans than they were before.
Just as everyone predicted, the religious haters and right wing thugs will now try to chip away at all the rights of the LGBTQ+ people including same-sex marriage just as they did with abortion rights until they managed to kill it. Damn these religious right fundamentalist fanatics who desperately want to return to the 1950s when white men were automatically in charge and women were subservient to them. They are desperate for the time when white men had all the rights. Hugs
“What should our strategy be now that we’re getting these precedents? I think we have to flood the zone. I think we have to find good complaints, and this is why First Liberty is so important, everybody.
“It’s FirstLiberty.org, I do a lot of different things with them, we do a lot of events together. They are on the cutting edge. They play to win. And not many groups can say, ‘Oh yeah, we go to the Supreme Court, we win nine-nothing, and we went last year and they won the Coach Kennedy case.’
“Pretty amazing, guys. They are top-tier. FirstLiberty.org.” – Charlie Kirk, interviewing Kelly Shackelford of the anti-LGBTQ hate group, First Liberty Institute, which represents the anti-gay bakers in Oregon.
But she didn’t smile enough. And she was too shrill, and lecturing. And Benghazi. And her emails. And her pantsuits. And she just didn’t excite me. And she talked to Goldman-Sachs. And both sides are the same, anyway, so why bother?
I agree. The whole thing was made up. And I’m sure SCOTUS knew that. And the conservative majority made a horrible, completely wrong ruling. Proving the conservative majority doesn’t give a rats ass about equality, fairness or honesty. I think we need major changes to the supreme court system. Term limits for starters. No one should have that position for life or that much absolute power. And I hate the word “supreme”. It sounds too much like the “supreme being” (jeezus or gawd), the “supreme leader” like Iran’s horrible ruler. There should be no supreme anything. (Except maybe The Supremes) The mere term suggests they are above the rest of us. Not to be questioned or challenged.
By the time Hillary ran for office in 2016 the court was already on the road to being captured by the Republicans AND had been corrupt for decades already.
The Dems didn’t run on the Supreme Court for years like the Repubs did and in not doing so, allowed them to take the court.
I have long held that anti-gay discrimination on account of religion is in itself a form of religious discrimination. Not because being gay is a religion, but because we are discriminated against since we don’t follow the tenets of THEIR religion, which is none of their business. It is a privileging of THEIR religious beliefs over OUR civil rights (as well as our religious beliefs, or lack thereof) in the public accommodations sphere.
The discriminators have ‘blurry boundaries.” Malignant narcissism is like that.
If you claim your refusal to serve anyone is based on your sincerely held religious beliefs . . .
And you don’t have to justify those beliefs with any kind of logical argument. The rightists aren’t required to. All they–and therefore WE–have to do is declare that’s the reason. The Court doesn’t require you to belong to any church or cite any biblical texts.
Lance makes a great point. He is cis so doesn’t understand what it is like to be trans. But if he was forced against his will to be trans it would lead to the same issue in him that trans people feel now being forced to be cis. Wonderful point. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 