Florida anti-LGBTQ laws prompt families who feel unsafe to flee
– Arlo Dennis has decided on a deadline to get their family out of Florida: July 1.
That is the day a slate of new laws signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting the LGBTQ community take effect. Doctors will be allowed to deny care based on their moral beliefs. The use of preferred pronouns will be banned in public schools. And children will be barred from attending drag shows, among other measures. One law that prohibits gender-affirming health care for transgender people under the age of 18 is already being enforced.
The Republican governor vying to become president in the 2024 election championed the bills as part of his “Florida Blueprint.” His critics call it “the slate of hate.”
For Dennis, they add up to a difficult but urgent decision to flee. “I’m a trans adult. I have gendernonconforming children, and these laws are just so specifically targeting our communities that I don’t feel like my parenting relationship is going to continue to be respected,” Dennis said. “We just low grade don’t feel safe.”
A tectonic shift in how the LGBTQ community perceives its welcome is underway in a state famed for both a vibrant gay history in pockets like Key West and a past filled with examples of intolerance and aggression. While some of the new legislation builds on previous laws, gay rights advocates say they are alarmed by the sheer number of bills and the increasingly hostile rhetoric from DeSantis and Republican state lawmakers, who have championed the legislation as making Florida safe for children and standing up for parental rights, echoing a theme frequently used on the campaign trail by DeSantis.
In recent weeks, several civil rights groups have issued travel advisories for Florida, warning LGBTQ tourists to reconsider plans to visit the Sunshine State. The overall impact of the laws make Florida “openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the nation, said in its warning in May.
Two Florida communities have canceled annual Pride parades out of concern that they will unintentionally break a new law that makes it a thirddegree felony to have a child present at “an adult live performance.” Some transgender families are placing their children in private schools. And a growing roster of LGBTQ families and individuals are opting to leave.
NBA superstar Dwyane Wade announced that he had moved his family to California in part because he feared his transgender
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I HAVE TRANS FRIENDS WHO ARE LEAVING THE STATE. PEOPLE DON’T FEEL SAFE RIGHT NOW
Joseph Clark, chief executive of Gay Days at Walt Disney World
teenage daughter “would not be accepted or feel comfortable” in Florida. A NASA engineer left for Illinois after concluding the new bills amount to the state “attempting to erase trans people.”
Those who cannot afford to relocate are turning to GoFundMe to raise money to leave a state they say has become a dangerous place for them and their children. Advocates for transgender Floridians have started Transit Underground, an informal coalition to help connect those leaving with volunteers who offer transportation and temporary housing.
“We’re telling allies who say we should not leave, but stay and fight, that trans people can’t live in a state of genocidal terror,” said Lakey Love, a founder of the Florida Coalition for Transgender Liberation, which is supporting Transit Underground.
DeSantis and his staff have dismissed the growing backlash. Christina Pushaw, a former DeSantis