Come Out With Pride 2015 is here, and it is time to party! What a year it has been – worldwide, nationwide, statewide and right here in Central Florida. The LGBT community has so much to celebrate and be thankful for this year as we gather around Lake Eola for the annual rainbow shindig. Most especially, we will celebrate how we all have come together this past year to protect, defend and empower our community. That is why the COWP Committee chose “Pride United” as this year’s theme. That is why, after skipping COWP the last two years, I look forward to hosting this year’s COWP Rally.
Obviously the gold prize this year is the realization of marriage equality – Jan. 6 here in Florida and June 26 nationwide. It was a long time coming, and it only happened because an amazing diversity of advocates (and some really great lawyers!) united all over the nation and across state lines to make sure that every state was included. (Come on Alabama, you’ve got some serious loony tunes down there, but no one is left behind!) That alone is cause to pop the corks, but there’s more. President Obama issued an executive order banning discrimination against LGBTs by federal agencies and federal contractors (covering hundreds of thousands of employees), and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a landmark decision interpreting the employment protections of the federal Civil Rights Act to apply to sexual orientation. The Pentagon is ready to allow transgenders to serve openly in the armed forces. Heck, even the Boy Scouts have opened their tents to LGBTs!
At a local level here in Central Florida, our community united to make substantial contributions to the achievement of marriage equality, including securing the official support of our Orlando and Orange County governments, by filing amicus briefs in the marriage equality lawsuits. It was the Orange and Osceola County Clerks, Tiffany Moore Russell and Armando Ramirez, who broke through the logjam and opened the floodgates to the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses in Florida. I was honored to join Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer as he presided at City Hall over the first mass same-sex wedding ceremony in Florida. Osceola County just recently passed the most progressive LGBT-inclusive human rights ordinance in the state. And, we as a community did what was necessary to preserve cherished organizations that have served our community well for many years, and the leaders of those organizations overcame some pretty profound adversity to bring us a new, improved, healthy and relevant COWP.
Kudos in particular to Orlando Commissioner Patty Sheehan for sponsoring scholarships which she will present to deserving young people at the 6 p.m. COWP Rally on Oct. 10, helping COWP revive its philanthropic roots. Yes, COWP should be a fun party, and we appreciate the “legitimacy” afforded by all those corporate sponsors, but that is just window dressing. The core mission of COWP has always been activism, and giving back to the community. That is truly how we make our community stronger and ultimately achieve our goal of full equality.
We aren’t there yet, folks. Unfortunately, there is still much left to do. Discrimination against LGBTs is still legal in 28 states, including Florida; bullying and hate crimes against LGBTs are still prevalent; transgender people, especially youth, still face rampant discrimination; and, even though we have legally obtained the right to marry, there are still problems to be addressed. The state of Florida refuses to list both married same-sex parents on their children’s birth certificates, and bigoted clerks and judges across the country refuse to perform their constitutional duties. And, of course, now we have to contend with the hysterical fabricated allegations of “assaults” on “religious liberty” that are springing forth across the nation.
Unfortunately, one of the most insidious purveyors of faith-based bigotry sits right here in our own backyard. The Liberty Counsel, led by Mat Staver, is the so-called Christian law firm that has catapulted to international infamy for its representation of Kentucky clerk Kim Davis. We know them well. Staver wrote the Florida anti-gay-marriage amendment that passed in 2008, and fought like hell to preserve it when the legal challenges ensued, all the while peddling the most offensive and disgusting lies about LGBT individuals and families. Liberty Counsel is so bad that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated it as an anti-gay hate group, for its “propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling. ” SPLC further notes that “these falsehoods have the effect of defaming a very large group of people which has the opportunity to subject them to violence.” Hate speech leads to hate violence. LGBT people get hurt, and some of them get murdered.
Every year at COWP, I remember Ryan Skipper, the young Florida gay man who was murdered in a vicious hate crime in 2007. I introduced Ryan Skipper’s amazing parents, Lynn and Pat Mulder, to the COWP stage in 2007, and again in 2008, when we celebrated COWP on the 10th anniversary of the death of Mathew Shepard. I think about Ryan, and about all the souls that we have lost, and continue to lose, to bigotry and hate. And I renew my will to keep fighting.
So, as you enjoy COWP and celebrate all the amazing advancements that our community has achieved, please stop and remember Ryan – all the Ryans – and keep fighting.
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