ORLANDO | A week of Pride continued on Oct. 10 when Come Out With Pride, in partnership with QLatinx, presented the inaugural Reel Pride at The Venue in Orlando.
Reel Pride screened the international LGBTQ short film “MAR (The Sea),” directed by Portuguese-Canadian filmmaker William Vitoria. Vitoria was on hand for the event and held a Q&A session after the audience watched his film.
“MAR” director William Vitoria
Come Out With Pride’s expansion to a full week of events partners Pride with QLatinx to present Reel Pride, an international film screening of the LGBTQ-themed short film, “MAR .”
“MAR” is directed by Portuguese-Canadian filmmaker William Vitoria.
“I was born in Toronto where I lived until I was seven years old, then my parents moved me to Portugal,” says Vitoria, 28. “I lived there for 14 years and moved back to Toronto.”
“Guys in Orlando suck!” “The gay community in Orlando is so transient.” I heard these phrases way too often in the early 2000s, but I never bought into that way of thinking.
I moved to Central Florida in 1986. This was back in the days when the 408 was just two lanes each way, The Winter Park Village was an enclosed Mall and Ronnie’s was serving the Mogambo Extravaganza (a sixth grade ice cream lover’s dream dessert). I didn’t know it at the time, but I was on track to meet some amazing people with incredible stories to tell, and who would disprove the notion that Orlando was not a strong LGBTQ community.
ORLANDO | Come Out With Pride (COWP) announced its schedule of events at its 2018 Big Reveal at Tin Roof Orlando July 30. COWP will extend its official events from the traditional three-day weekend to a full week of events.
COWP’s week-long series of events will take place throughout Orlando Oct. 8-14. Several community leaders took the stage at the Big Reveal to make the announcements.
ORLANDO | The One Orlando Alliance has retracted the offer of employment made to former Alabama Rep. Patricia Todd to serve as the organization’s executive director after Todd suggested on Twitter May 15 that Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey is a lesbian.
“The Board affirms that Ms. Todd’s recent comments are not aligned with the values of One Orlando Alliance. We strongly believe that coming out is a personal choice and we do not support involuntarily outing,” said Jennifer Foster, Chair of the Board of Directors and one of the original co-conveners of the Alliance, in a press release. “This has been a challenging situation. While Ms. Todd has a well-established record of outstanding service to the community, her lapse in judgment has led us to end our relationship with her. We admire her many decades of exemplary service and believe that, with the right opportunity, Ms. Todd will continue to use her many talents to make significant progress advocating for justice and equality.”
There have been numerous efforts to make sense – and sociological advancement – following the attack at Pulse Orlando on June 12.
Look around you. There are murals everywhere, scenes of righteous indignations, ribbon-makers delivering rainbows to celebrities, candlelight tributes, attempts to curb the seeming necessity to take those out with whom you do not agree. Orlando is America’s tipping point on both the LGBTQ and gun-violence fronts, and many of those who are most affected are seeking change to make things better. You can say “intersectionality” in terms of protest all you want, but here, now, it is manifest. These are but a few of the bright spots to come from that dark night. Orlando is coming together; you can help.
ORLANDO – While there will certainly be a number of events launched in the coming months to pay homage to those who suffered from the June 12 massacre at Pulse, the city and the county are preparing for the event in the best way they know how. A “Day of Love and Kindness” has been planned to coincide with vigils at the Pulse site, Lake Eola and the History Center.
Orlando’s LGBTQ Alliance, which formed in the wake of the tragedy, is working with the municipal governments to make “love and kindness” matter. Alliance member Jennifer Foster of Foster Productions Inc. says that June 12 should be a day where everyone makes a special effort to be kind in traffic, maybe donate blood and generally be good to locals.
Orlando – On Jan. 29, amid of flood of hurried information and the confusion that comes along with it, more than 1,000 people of Orlando (and those who love them) convened upon the Orlando International Airport to voice their solidarity for their marginalized populations, LGBTQ and Muslim populations among them. As the gathered crowd was educated about the lines of peaceful protest against the backdrop of Lee Vista’s The Haven Bar – a site offered by the strip-mall’s owner (and former Libertarian Orlando mayoral candidate) Matthew Falconer for gathering – participants were instructed, in typical protest parlance, to not descend to the level of name-calling that has made anti-gay, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant conjecture the focus, an act that was sure to be offered at a high-profile event in one of the busiest travel meccas in the world.
“Do not engage with the opposition,” that was the key point. It will get you nowhere.
It’s almost impossible to peruse any Orlando media without catching a glance of the Human Rights Campaign’s (seemingly) chief networker Carlos Carbonell. Carbonell also serves on the Contigo Fund Grant Committee, an affiliate of the Our Fund Foundation, that was developed in Orlando in the wake of the Pulse massacre. He’s also a key figure in the newly formed LGBTQ alliance which seeks to pull resources together from throughout the community to achieve equality and fairness.
“I have a huge love for everything Orlando,” he says. “I graduated college from the University of Florida. I came to Orlando and had odd jobs, like working for Disney. I ended up working for a marketing firm. For 10 years, I helped build up the marketing side of that. But, it was through my friend [Orlando LGBTQ advocate] Jennifer Foster and a few others that I got involved in HRC, because there wasn’t an HRC here. So there were about four or five others that got that going. I was also somewhat involved in the Democratic Party, just helping out here and there. That gave a little bit of a compassion for advocacy.”
Translated by Esteban Rios.
Un grupo recién formado trabaja para promover la intersección a nivel local de las voces y opiniones de las comunidades LGBTQ+ y Latinx a lo largo de toda Florida Central.
Más que nada, QLatinx desea brindar un espacio de sanación para sus miembros. El grupo busca fortalecer a las personas LGBTQ+ y Latinx, así como a sus aliados quienes han resultado sumamente afectados por el crimen de odio cometido en Pulse, para movilizar y apoyarse los unos a los otros a medida que afrontan las secuelas del tiroteo. El grupo ya ha sido noticia reciente al aparecer en la revista The New Yorker.
Billy Manes
We are all Mercedes Successful. We are all vulnerable. We are all show-stopping superstars while part-timing as human beings in need of love.
There has been an overflow of emotion toward the LGBT community since the Pulse shooting on June 12 – concerts, banners, memorials, donations – but there’s still a fairly large closet within which many of our community are forced to reside, often full of life, sometimes not alive at all. By now, we know that all too well.
A newly formed group is working to advocate for the intersection of local, LGBTQ+ and Latinx voices across Central Florida.
QLatinx, first and foremost, wants to provide a space for its members to heal. The group seeks to empower LGBTQ+ Latinx people and their allies who have been so deeply impacted by the Pulse hate crime to mobilize and support one another as they continue to cope with the aftermath of the shooting. The group has already made national headlines recently being featured in The New Yorker.
Sign Up for our eNewsletter
Follow Us
Robert pick up a DMV driver's manual and learn how to actually drive properly. And don't forget to obtain something... Oct 05, 1:02 PM
We are seeking LGBTQ NEWSHOUNDS to regularly post to our 10 LAMBDA RAINBOW FB Group Sites and become Moderator/Administrators &TAKE... Oct 05, 3:36 AM
Dear Watermark, please conduct a refresher course with your journalists about the correct grammatical usage for "there" and "their." Our... Oct 04, 7:30 PM
Watermark is a multi-faceted media company using opportunities and innovations to communicate and advance LGBT interests, with a corporate emphasis on professionalism while building strong relationships with our readers, customers and community.
