Gay Floridians Are Leaving in Droves, Says Pride Organizer
The organizer of Florida’s Lake County Pride shares what the group is up against.
Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images and Wikimedia Commons
Many Pride groups in Florida are canceling the month-long celebrations as multiple anti-LGBTQ bills hitting the state have left the community, and its allies, fearful of repercussions.
Lake County Pride’s events, however, are moving ahead.
“It’s not exactly being welcomed by the community where we’re having it. In fact, yesterday I just got a cease-and-desist from them, telling me not to mention them at all. They don’t want this to take place, but we’re gonna persevere,” the group’s President and CEO Danielle Olivani says on this episode of The New Abnormal politics podcast.
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“We’re gonna have this Pride, because we’re fully within our rights to do so. And you know, we’re just gonna deal with things as they go. But right now, it’s a mixture of apprehension, fear. Yet, I’m hopeful at the same time.”
Olivani also shares with TNA co-host Danielle Moodie what it’s like to be a member of the LGBTQ community at this time, in such a rural part of the state at that (“There’s no tolerance here”), and the impact that the bans have been having on the youth of the community especially.
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They also say that the recent legislation under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, now also a 2024 presidential candidate, has triggered what they’d call a “mass migration” out of the state.
“It’s too much,” they say.
Also in this episode: the second part of James Risen’s two-part interview with TNA co-host Andy Levy, where he shares more about Senator Frank Church, the man who lead the Church Hearings, which held the CIA and FBI to account for their abuses. Fun fact: Church and Jimmy Carter hated one another, and Carter said so in his diary.
Risen also shares why Jim Jordan will never be anything like Church.
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
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