Letters: Responses to Disney-LGBT guest column.

C. Britt Beemer wrote that less than 5 percent of the American population identified as gay or lesbian. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, 4.1 percent of the Orlando-Sanford-Kissimmee area identifies as LGBT. Is their safety less important because they are in a minority? Are those individuals less valuable because of their identification, and because they don’t number in the tens of thousands like Beemer’s visitors to The Ark Encounter?

The overall tourism numbers for the state have been in decline partly because of the nation’s new, less-inclusive government, which has been trying to block foreign visitors. According to Foursquare, international tourism to America has declined by an average of 11 percent since October 2016. With these numbers, we could say that Orlando is losing revenue due to conservatism like Beemer’s, not because of its LGBT community.

He wrote that the “portrayal of the Pulse shooting as a gay-lesbian issue … accounts for the drop in visitors” to Disney World. I think the deaths of 49 people solely based on their sexual orientation and gender is something that should not be portrayed as anything less than it is — a coldblooded attack against the LGBT community by someone who shares the belief that Orlando would benefit from spurning them.

I wouldn’t want to live in the Orlando Beemer proposes — one that closes its heart to its LGBT brothers and sisters based on flimsy correlations, rather than welcoming them with open arms. Ally Lanier Altamonte Springs