This is more of the rights push to erase the LGBTQ+ from society. They are trying to return to the past when people could be fired simply for being gay. These people really carve the society of the 1950s when the LGBTQ+ were not in public society and the normal was considered straight and cis with any divergence considered an illness. I think it is because they can’t imagine something if they don’t feel it or understand it. They are straight so straight should be what everyone feels, to feel differently is weird and yucky to them. They view same sex acts as yucky because it doesn’t appeal to them, but they don’t stop to think that is how gay people feel about mixed sex relationships. Hugs
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Jacob OglesAugust 13, 20258min
Sarasota County School Board member Tom Edwards just joined a nonprofit promoting diversity programs. Now, local Republicans say he should resign his public office, but the incumbent brushed that off as a desperate attempt to distract from other bad news for the GOP.
Project Pride SRQ last week announced that Edwards, a second-term School Board member, had taken over as Executive Director of the Sarasota organization.
“Project Pride envisions a silo-free community that is proud, resilient, and unified by shared values, not tribal policies,” Edwards said last week. “I am so excited that Project Pride has given me this platform to do this important work.”
But the Republican Party of Sarasota (RPOS) immediately called out Edwards’ new job as a conflict.
“In his new role, Tom Edwards will have overt conflicts of interest. The press release announcing this new job said Edwards will work to establish multiple programs in the schools and after school to further this radical ideology rejected by the vast majority of Americans,” reads a statement from the party.
“Tom Edwards can do whatever that he wants in his private life. But this position leverages him as a School Board member to push programs in the public, taxpayer-funded schools of which he has enormous influence. He cannot hold this position and look out for the well-being of all students. He clearly is incentivized to prioritize a small minority.”
Edwards made clear he has no intention of stepping away from his new work.
“Mr. Brill, is this a political ploy created as another distraction from the (Jeffrey) Epstein files? Or perhaps, with the upcoming School Board elections, you are concerned about two of your previously-endorsed School Board members’ reputations spoiling the chances of election for their replacements? If that’s the case, is it the one who was embroiled in the ‘Throuplegate’ scandal along with her husband, who was terminated as the State Republican Party chair because of rape allegations? Or is it the one who behaved like a spoiled child, refusing to return to her post and complete her term after losing her election? I must have missed it when you called for their resignations,” Edwards said in a statement.
“Only you can answer what keeps you up at night. In the meantime, I will continue to do the good School Board work that the community – from both sides of the aisle – overwhelmingly reelected me to do. Additionally, I will use my new position at Project Pride SRQ to build a stronger, kinder, more resilient community that can respond to the bullying tactics frequently deployed on members of the LGTBQ+ community. I remain steadfast in building coalitions that foster inclusivity and stand against the elimination of human rights for any element of the population.”
Edwards, who is openly gay, has faced criticism since his election to the School Board in 2020, when he defeated incumbent School Board member Eric Robinson. Gov. Ron DeSantis listed the School Board member as a top target in the last election cycle, but Edwards won re-election regardless.
Edwards walked out of a School Board meeting in 2023 after members of the public hurled homophobic slurs at him. A few months later, he was among those members calling for fellow School Board member Bridget Ziegler to resign amid her own sex scandal; she remains on the board.
Now, Republicans want Edwards to step down, and labeled his agenda as extreme.
“School Board Member Tom Edwards is a supporter of radical LGBTQ beliefs and has pushed them as a School Board member — completely out of touch with what the Sarasota County community of parents want,” reads a statement sent out by RPOS Chair Jack Brill. “But now he has been named Executive Director of Project Pride SRQ, which consistently pushes ideas far outside the mainstream.”
Project Pride SRQ leaders had a different take on Edwards’ record.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Tom as our new executive director,” said Justyn Hunter-Ceruti, Project Pride SRQ Board President. “His leadership, experience, and deep ties to the community will be invaluable as we step into this next chapter. I look forward to working with Tom to advance our mission and ensure that Project Pride continues to be a powerful force for inclusion, connection, and resilience in Sarasota and beyond.”
Added Harry Cicchetti, Vice President of the organization’s board: “Tom brings a passion for our mission, a wealth of experience, and a dedication to advancing equity, justice and inclusion not only for LGBTQ+ people but for all who face barriers, which our organization is committed to addressing at this pivotal time in our culture. The board looks forward to working with Tom as he leads our organization into our next chapter of growth and impact.”
Regardless, the fact that the organization also said Edwards will work on issues like a peer-to-peer Support Squad of students to identify bullying and mobilize around victims has GOP leaders concerned.
“We call on Tom Edwards to resign his School Board seat if he wants to be Executive Director of this organization,” reads the RPOS statement. “Holding both positions is antithetical to ethical behavior and harmful to public school students.”
Jacob Ogles
Jacob Ogles has covered politics in Florida since 2000 for regional outlets including SRQ Magazine in Sarasota, The News-Press in Fort Myers and The Daily Commercial in Leesburg. His work has appeared nationally in The Advocate, Wired and other publications. Events like SRQ’s Where The Votes Are workshops made Ogles one of Southwest Florida’s most respected political analysts, and outlets like WWSB ABC 7 and WSRQ Sarasota have featured his insights. He can be reached at jacobogles@hotmail.com.
Scottie's Playtime 
But also many of those people are closeted LGBTQ+, and despise it in themselves because they’re afraid, so they persecute out people.
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Hi Ali. I have never understood that. I can understand hiding if you are scared of being gay. I really can. But the fact that at 5 I laid on the floor being hit by my 10 year old hell spawn sister as she told me I was queer. I was crying and begged her to stop hitting me. I asked why she said I was queer, I had no idea what the word was. She said it was because I let guys fuck me and I sucked their cocks. I was confused and said “But I am told to and that is what they make me do”. And she said, “yes, so you are queer”. She did not understand or did not care that I had no agency in the acts I was forced to do.
Plus she was in the same bed with her older sister that offered me the warmth of their real bed with blankets in the cold of winter if I would put my face down there and use my tongue to make them happy. You know I am surprised I am not straight if abuse makes you one sexual orientation or the other. My male hell spawn never offered me their beds, only abused me in the hallway on my mat, inside the house anyplace they had access, or outside the house including taking me places to be abused by their friends.
But as I lay shivering sometimes crying one of the hell spawn daughters would come out of their room and offer the chance to sleep in their bed … if I did as they asked. It was not always pleasing them sexually sometimes it was letting them hurt me, put things inside me but I couldn’t cry out or scream because that might bring the adopting parents in.
You mention the idea that LGBTQ+ people in hiding despise it in themselves, so persecute out people.
Ali I have so many memories of being hit to make me perform oral sex only to be hit after doing so, insulted and being mocked for being queer. I remember being hit before, during, and after being raped then told I forced them to do it because I was queer. The insults they threw at me during all of it still burn in my memories like bright lines I can never forget. But to the best of my knowledge, none of them were gay or turned out gay. I know what you say seems true, and I have read all the reports of hate preachers who turned out to be gay or such.
In truth I am not sure if it would make me feel better to know the people who tortured me since I was 3 were struggling with their own demons. I think if there was some explanation they used me for their own pleasure even the times it seems they hurt me just to cause me pain I would be so happy to hear / understand it.
At night I still wake up the scared kid on a mat with a teen boy standing over him peeing or thrashing in my bed at 62 remembering being grabbed, forced over on my stomach, and being raped. So at this point their motivations are not so important to me as why they felt any small child deserves to be used that way. Hugs
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Well, I didn’t say every abuser who tosses epithets to gay people are gay. I think you get what I’m saying, about ultra religious/rightwingers calling others gay, and being closeted, even to themselves. That’s what I said, just in case. Nothing to do with previous abuse. I don’t believe abuse causes sexuality; I think that is, in every person, abuse or good care notwithstanding.
I do believe that abusers were abused, and that while many abused manage to break the cycle, many don’t. As with my previous comment, that is not an excuse, nor am I excusing any of the abusers, all the way up and down the line. Sometimes an individual is simply that ill, I understand that, too; that is a rarer case. BTK may have been abused as a child, but did not abuse his child. However, he did very bad things to other people for many years.
But all I said is that the guy in the article calling the school board member gay is likely a self-despising, fearful non-conforming person themself, so projecting it upon another. I wasn’t arguing about it, I’d hoped to be being supportive.
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Hi Ali. Your comment was very supportive and gave me the strength to reply as I did. I understand what you meant, there are many LGBTQ+ who are self loathing or trying to gain acceptance while they hide by voicing hate at other LGBTQ+. We have all seen examples. But then you have the openly hating gays that want tax cuts and a white country so badly they are willing to sell out the entire LGBTQ+ community that they are a part of by voting and pushing the most hateful republican policies. The quislings are known as the Log Cabin Republicans. The fact is growing up before the enlightenment of the 1990s / 2000s many gay kids felt that to survive and hide they needed to be as homophobic as the surrounding kids, which was a bullying hate loop reinforcement. I couldn’t do it not even to protect myself. I just took the abuse and bullying without attacking others. I was too empathic to cause pain to others as I understood the hurt of pain far too well. Again your comment was grand. I just hate the idea of those haters being a member of the same club I belong to. Hugs
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Yeah, I get what you mean about reprehensible members of a not reprehensible club!
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Hi Ali. Thank you. But I really want to thank you for the gift you gave me. See the memories are always in my head, mostly barely under the surface of the water. I hate that expressing my memories helps me, but at the same time I worry the poison of what I lived through will infect others, cause them pains that will not stop, or leave in their emotions the horror I live with. Ron and my few therapists I have seen say it doesn’t work that way, it can’t transfer to others just by reading / hearing it. But I woke last night in a panic feeling the hands on me …. and I do not want every in any way to lay that burden on anyone else. Even now as I write these memories of the abuse and more important the emotions of what I felt then that washed over me I worry desperately that I am pushing that pain, my pain of being abuse on to people I care about. Those emotions!
Sorry I just froze for about two minutes. It has been happening more frequently to me when the memories overwhelm me, they take over my mind and my body just stops receiving inputs from the outside world. My mind traps me in the world of then … a little boy being abused, the feelings, the fear, the pain, and the desperate desire to do what I need to do to get a break from it all, To please them to get peace. To find a place with no pain.
And my mind / body just got that gift. Ron came into my office and told me he was going to bed and asked me to join him. In his arms and he is the comforting space the dreams can’t happen, the memories won’t come forward. I will find peace in my thoughts and sleep. Until one of us rolls away and the nightmares begin. But that is my life. The life my abusers gave me. The life the father that couldn’t stop creating children sold me to.
Sorry this got so damn rambling and emotional again. You do not deserve this and yet I keep doing it to you. I need to stop, I am abusing you by forcing my memories / my emotions on to you. Damn there is no way to make the pain end that doesn’t hurt other people. Hopeful hugs
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Scottie. You started out acknowledging that you telling us about your past is not visiting your past upon us. It is hard to read about it because of our friendship, but it doesn’t burden me; I only wish I could help you release it. I guess the best way is by reading you, though, so that’s what I do. No worries.
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😍🥰You are a wonderful person 👼🙏🤗 🙇♂️
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Nah, just a human!🌞
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