[Announcer] Major funding for this program is provided by Cliff Cideko and the Warten Foundation.

Additional funding is provided by the following.

Hello and welcome to Voices of Pride, a South Florida PBS community conversation.

I'm Pam Giganti, host of "Your South Florida."

Thank you so much for joining us.

June is Pride Month, and for many years now, cities and industry across the country have been celebrating and honoring members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Their contributions to the arts, business and medicine have been highlighted and help to educate society about who they are.

It's a vibrant and diverse community made up of all races, cultural backgrounds, and religious affiliations.

Here in South Florida, they are teachers, police officers, physicians, judges, and more.

They are our neighbors, friends and colleagues.

But new laws being put in place have many in the LGBTQ+ community concerned.

Some, especially younger members, say uncertainty and fears about their future and their safety is affecting their mental health.

So now, as the community prepares to celebrate Pride this year, our goal with this program is to enlighten the broader South Florida community about the LGBTQ+ community and to find some common ground.

We recognize the importance of dispelling misconceptions, dismantling preconceived notions, and bridging the gaps in understanding that often divide us.

This evening we wanna create a safe and respectful space for conversation and discussion.

We'll address questions, provide resources, and share personal stories that shed light on the realities of LGBTQ+ people.

We'll explore topics such as history, healthcare, mental health, economic impacts, and the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

All right, let's get started.

I'd like to introduce our panel.

Please welcome City of Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis, the first openly gay mayor of the city.

Thank you.

Robert Boo, CEO of the Pride Center at Equality Park in Wilton Manors.

Damon Jones, clinical psychotherapist and cofounder and CEO of Afro Pride Federation, Inc. And Robert Kesten, executive director of the Stonewall National Museum and Archives in Fort Lauderdale.

Thank you all so much for being here.

We really appreciate it.

All right, let's begin by talking about the history of the LGBTQ+ people here in Florida.

Their presence and their impact go back decades.

Robert, I wanna start with you.

Kind of walk us through the history of the LGBTQ+ people here in Florida, going back all the way even to like the Johns Committee and to Anita Bryant and her movement, Save Our Children, which was in the seventies.

Well, in reality, the community has been here far longer than that.

Ever since there were people settled in Florida, undoubtedly there were members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

They may not have been out, they may not have been open, and they certainly weren't recorded in history.

But what we do know is when the negative things happen.

So the Johns Committee was one that was a state-sponsored effort to remove LGBTQIA people from public life.

Then you had, as you said, Anita Bryant, who started her Save the Children campaign, which sounds awfully familiar to what's going on today.

There were many other things, more successes than failures.

So with the AIDS crisis, people organized in Florida and they fought back.

With marriage, people organized and fought back.

With the ability to serve in the military, people organized and fought back.

So the successes are far greater than the tragedies and the unhappy periods of time.

And what is so important is to recognize that the community that's here today in 2023 is not the community that was here in 1969 or 1950.

And now there are Equality Florida, there's HRC, there's the Task Force, there's Lambda Legal.

And the reality is that nobody's going back to a time when those organizations and institutions didn't exist.

So we can't look at what's going on today through the prism that some in elective office would like us to look at and be fearful or not have courage, because we are not the same community.

When all of those things started, the Johns Committee was as marginally successful as it was simply because people were afraid to be out.

Well, now you've got an out mayor.

Now you've got out people that are running corporations on corporate boards.

There's no going back, because the rainbow flag is far more than just the gay community.

It represents everyone.

And although the LGBTQIA community only has seven letters of the alphabet now, my guess is that as more and more people start to define who they are the way they want to be identified, we will use all 26 letters of that alphabet, and they will all fit comfortably under a very big rainbow flag.

And there will no longer be allies; there will be friends and family.

And then the world will change for the better.

Thank you, Robert.

Robert Boo, I wanna bring you in and talk about the Pride Center.

And Robert Kesten was just saying the community's not the same community it used to be.

It's changed, it's grown.

Talk about how the center has grown, and you're celebrating now 30 years of the center being in South Florida.

Yeah, June 25th will be our 30th anniversary.

And like many community centers and many organizations, we literally started out of someone's living room.

And so our founder, Alan Schubert, along with a number of other individuals around at that time had the strength and the foresight to come together, and at that time coming together because of the AIDS crisis.

And so that's how we really got our start back in 1993.

And it was the community coming together and seeing the need that wasn't being provided for our brothers and sisters who were suffering from HIV/AIDS.

And so we have developed over the last 30 years, and we've grown to where we are now on a five and a half acre campus.

And we are the home for 10 other organizations, and 60 groups and organizations utilize our meeting room space.

And so we're constantly changing and trying to meet the needs of the community because the needs of the community have changed over the last 30 years.

Okay.

Yeah.

Damon, I wanna bring you in and let's talk about why you thought it was so important to create Afro Pride.

And kind of what I'm hearing is what some of the conversation we're having as well as about the community growing.

And it was really important for you to create kind of this space for BIPOC people, right?

For Black, Indigenous, People of Color.

So talk about that.

Okay, exactly.

Afro Pride was founded in 2020, right in the middle of the Covid pandemic.

Me being a part of the community, and we saw that there was a need.

There wasn't many organizations out that represented us.

There wasn't many organizations that were out that were led by us.

And sometimes it feels like we were invisible at times, especially when it comes to disparities within the community as far as when you look at statistics, the BIPOC community seems to always to be at the bottom.

The highest number in HIV cases, the highest number in homelessness.

And so we've just wanted to make sure there was a focus on that community to make sure that we can bridge that gap in that community.

So we found it very important to found Afro Pride and direct services to fill that gap and to create an awareness.

Yeah, did you feel because there's also the term multiple minority, because there are people who are part of that community who are a minority in several communities, right?

You're a minority in the LGBTQ+ community, or might be a minority in the Black community, right?

So there are special needs that folks have or different things that they encounter that might be different than somebody else.

Yes, yeah.

Sometimes there's several injustices.

You know, there's the injustice of being Black, there's the injustice of being LGBTQ, so yeah, that community suffers a multiple of injustices.

So it's a little different sometimes for the need of that particular community and that population.

And Mayor Trantalis, talk about how important it is for you to be the first openly gay mayor of a city, a major metropolitan city like Fort Lauderdale.

Talk about how that is important to this community, to the idea of inclusivity, to diversity.

First of all, being the first openly gay city commissioner from years ago, and now being the first openly gay mayor, being mayor, you're representing everybody.

And so having a person like myself standing out and saying I represent not just my community, but everybody in the community was a statement that the city made by electing me.

And so I tried to continue down that path of making sure that I wasn't so partisan in terms of culture, but I tried to be embracing in terms of trying to include everybody in the decision making and in the focus and the direction of the city.

Being a role model for other people in my community is what I feel is most important in my being mayor of the city of Fort Lauderdale, because it can be done, we can succeed.

We don't have to stand in the corners or the shadows of society and saying that we are not good enough to be at levels of importance such as being at the mayor of a city like Fort Lauderdale.

And I think that we're not gonna be afraid to continue down that path.

And I think these gentlemen would agree, and everybody in the audience would agree that this is just the beginning.

You know, we're seeing some setbacks politically in Tallahassee and other places around the country.

There's an attempt to try to push us back, but it's not gonna succeed.

They never do succeed because American knows better.

American instincts are about equality and about fairness, and it's not about marginalizing people.

In the end, those that choose to do that are gonna fail.

And I think that my role as mayor is to continue to try to be fair and equal.

And, I, you know, as I continue to perform in this role, I feel that I'm doing a justice not just for my community, but for everybody that lives in the city of Fort Lauderdale.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I just wanna add to that.

Yeah.

Because I think the mayor is absolutely right.

But one reason that he can so effectively represent everybody is because this community is everywhere.

There's not a religion, a national origin, a business, a family anywhere in the world that doesn't have a member of the LGBTQIA+ community in it.

There are Catholics, there are Jews, there are Muslims.

There are Blacks, there are whites, there are indigenous people.

I mean, it's everywhere.

And that's one of the reasons that as the mayor said, we will be successful going forward, because we're already there.

We're everybody's brother and sister.

Thank you, Robert.

Well, when it comes to inclusivity, perhaps the group that feels the most pressure as of late is the transgender community.

Currently there are 57 new anti-LGBTQ+ laws across 17 states, including at least four right here in Florida.

The laws include requiring transgender people to use the bathroom of the sex that was assigned to them at birth and banning gender-affirming care such as hormone replacement therapy for minors.

We recently visited SunServe, a Wilton Manors-based nonprofit that serves the trans community to hear how all of this is impacting them.

Take a look.

My name's Misty Eyez Alicea.

I'm a married heterosexual transgender woman, and I'm the director of three departments at an organization called SunServe.

I grew up in a Christian family, and I lived my entire life on stage, and I was a praise and worship leader, youth group leader, missionary.

The biggest misconception that the world has about trans people is that trans people are trans because they transition.

In reality, people transition because they're trans.

And what I mean by that is, we are born this way.

But some people have the courage to accept the brain that they were born with.

My name is Ren.

I'm 21, and I go by he/they.

I'm a transmasculine, nonbinary person.

For the most part, it's not like, my family didn't kick me out or anything.

They weren't awful.

But it was a bit rocky because in general, transition is a huge change for everyone, not just the person transitioning.

The family has to deal with, you know, you have a kid.

And especially when I'm adopted, you adopt a kid and you think, this is my daughter.

I raised them as a daughter, and all of a sudden at 13, they're like, "I don't like that, I don't go by that."

It's a change.

It's a really big change.

And I think for a lot of people, that's a big challenge when their child comes out because you're basically unlearning everything that you knew up until that point about your child.

Most of my clients come to me in a state of darkness and in a state, often, alcoholism or drug use or self harm, complete and total despair.

And when they accept and learn how to understand and deal with and safely transition, they're night and day different people.

I had a really bleak outlook of life.

I was at a point in which I wasn't thinking I was gonna make it till 18.

I was really in a bad spot.

But the time I turned 18, I realized I had all these opportunities to advocate for myself and get the help I wanted, be it therapy or going to SunServe and getting all the help I could get to start my transition.

And it's, in all honesty, it's changed my life for the better.

I've, I am still on a journey, but I feel much happier in my skin.

I feel much happier being me and being around others.

My transition journey started similar to a lot of our clients that came in.

I was struggling with depression, anxiety, and substance use as a direct result of my gender dysphoria.

I was struggling with gender identity, and what does it mean to be a trans man?

These clients are contemplating suicide because they feel like they have no other alternative.

They feel like they don't have people in their corner that will affirm their gender identity or their sexual orientation.

My name is Chris.

I'm a 39yearold heterosexual trans male.

I'm currently an intern student here serving at SunServe.

I'm in the licensed clinical mental health counseling program with the specialization in school counseling.

I knew I was trans from a very early age.

I wanted to come out as far as maybe like 10 years ago, but during that time it wasn't as known.

I didn't have a lot of information about it.

I would get a lot of pushback from my partners, my girlfriends at the time, and I kind of chose their happiness over my own.

Maybe about two years ago, I decided that, you know, I was tired of waking up depressed and not being happy with who I saw in the mirror.

And I just decided that it was time for me to finally be happy.

And being that I am currently in the mental health field, I decided the best way for me to be effective in helping my clients was to first make sure that I was good with my own mental health.

And in order for me to do that, I had to be comfortable in who I was.

We help our clients have the courage to exist in a world that tells them they don't belong in.

The laws every day are shocking.

We are fiercely being targeted, and it is sending shock waves through our community of despair and depression.

And therefore many trans people are trying to create a mass exodus from Florida.

Almost every day families are calling me, "Please, can SunServe help me get out?"

They are scared that they're gonna lose their housing.

They're scared that they're gonna lose any access to employment or transitioning services.

They're scared their insurance is no longer gonna cover them because they're a trans individual.

They are scared and they're coming to these support groups with a lot of anxiety and concern for their future.

I rely on things like Medicaid and such, and if they stop being able to pay for that, it'll be much trickier to get when I need like my HRT or my medications and such.

Especially when it comes to transitional care or gender-affirming care.

A lot of times people in my community feel like they can't exist and they don't deserve to live or thrive or be successful.

And I do think that we have every right to do all of those things.

We have every right as trans people to have the same milestones, graduation, marriage, success that every human has.

In the end, we're all just human.

We're all just people trying to love and care and just treat each other well.

My hope for the future is that, I mean, it may sound cliche, is that we just all get along.

You know, everybody learns to just love, embrace and accept each other.

The world would be so much happier if everybody just shared the space.

You know, there's enough room for all of us.

Damon, I wanna get your reaction to what we just saw, and also as a psychotherapist, you heard in the piece that people come in in a dark place.

Kind of talk to us about that because that's your field, is dealing with folks who are struggling.

Yeah, definitely.

First you have to build a rapport.

You know, you have to, when your clients come in, they have to be comfortable with you.

So it's very important first to build that rapport with your client.

And after that you have to assess and meet the client where they are.

You know, once you, you have to do an assessment because in this particular climate it's become fashionable to be anti-Black or anti-LGBT or anti-Semite.

It's become fashionable.

So you have to figure out where they are and how they're feeling.

Also, you have to, psychoeducation is what we call it.

So we have to be, you have to educate, 'cause sometimes there's a miseducation, demystifying.

What is anti?

Well, what is CRT?

What are these different laws?

You know, sometimes they don't know what they exactly are.

So a lot of these different organizations now are educating a lot of the community on what these things are and what these terms really mean.

And sometimes the reasoning behind it, you know, sometimes the reasoning behind it is for political things.

So once you educate that, once you psycho-educate, that helps.

Then after that, I would think being able to have a team, you know, because as a therapist, it's not just me.

It is the case manager, it is the psychiatrist, it is the medical doctor, it is the support groups, it is the Pride Center, it is these different organizations and society that we have to work as a team in order to help each other and lift each other up.

Sure.

Robert Boo, jump in here.

Talk about the Pride Center and helping.

And so at the Pride Center we have our own programs and services, but it's not just about us.

We do a lot of linkage of services.

And so if someone comes in or calls and says, "Hey, I need help," we connect them with the other organizations in the community that is their skill and their expertise.

And so we want to provide that space so anyone in the community can feel comfortable approaching us, coming in and asking for help, and looking for those resources so we can connect them and To people like Damon and others.

Correct.

Right.

Thank you so much.

Well, let's talk for a moment about the economic impact this community has on South Florida.

LGBTQ+ visitors spend more than one and a half billion dollars in just greater Fort Lauderdale alone each year.

Now, in recent weeks, Equality Florida and the NAACP have issued travel warnings for both LGBTQ+ visitors and visitors of color to the state in direct response to recent legislation.

So Mayor, I wanna bring you back in to kind of navigate this because the economic impact is huge.

So I think that message is really counterintuitive and really doesn't help the situation at all.

I know that they're trying to be helpful and those organizations are trying to allow people not to be naive when they look at Florida, but the reality is that we cannot be afraid.

And if you tell people not to come to Florida, it's almost like giving in to those who oppose you and saying, you know, this is not a place for Blacks, this is not a place for women, it's not a place for gay people, it's not a place for anybody, just unless you're this straight, you know, conventional type of person, white, you know, and that's not Florida.

Florida is about for everybody.

We have people from all over the world, all walks of life, and that's what Florida is.

If a few people who stand on a pulpit or stand on a soapbox and want to preach something that fits into their agenda and sort of creates a narrative that makes them look good, well, you know, that's very short-lived.

Florida, Fort Lauderdale, we are a welcoming community.

We always have been.

We are a very diverse community.

You know, Robert said we're gonna run outta letters at some point.

Well, we'll never run out of colors.

That's right.

That rainbow will continue to flourish, right?

And so the idea is that, you know, it makes sense to bring people to Florida.

We want more tourists.

We want people from all walks of life to come to Florida and to stand ready and to stand up against those voices of negativity, because that's what Florida's about.

That's how Fort Lauderdale has come to thrive and all the adjacent sister cities like Wilton Manors and Oakland Park and all the communities around us.

You know, it's because we have built a community here and it's because we have thrived that we've been allowed to prosper.

And I think that to say to people it's not a safe environment, it's a safe environment.

Trust me.

We are safe, we are prosperous, and we will continue to grow.

And I think everybody who's in this room and anybody who comes to visit our community feels it.

They come to these cities and they say, wow, it's happening here and it will continue to do so.

Right.

But if you're gonna say that Florida is dangerous, then western New York is dangerous.

If you're gonna say that Florida is dangerous, then other parts of California are dangerous.

So it's really just a political ploy that's used possibly with Equality Florida and the NAACP for the right reasons, but it doesn't necessarily bring us to where we need to be, and where we need to be is to recognize who we are, and who we are because of the NAACP and who we are because of Equality Florida and who we are because of the Human Rights Campaign.

We are stronger because those organizations exist.

And we're not going back to when those organizations didn't exist.

It's too big a risk economically, socially, culturally, to try and make people afraid to support their brothers and sisters.

And it won't fulfill the political ends that they're seeking to achieve.

It absolutely will not.

Mayor, is there a move to have those organizations rescind that decree, that warning?

We are not gonna tell other people what to do, but we know that from the position that we now sit in that that's not the message we want to put out there.

There are thousands of businesses run and patronized by the LGBTQ community, and we want them to continue to thrive.

We don't want them to wither at the vine.

I mean, that makes no sense.

And to see more visitors coming here and to see more people moving here, starting their careers and building a family amongst their friends and their loved ones, that's what we want, we want to continue that pattern.

That's what has made us strong up to now.

Just because there are some people in Tallahassee that have, you know, come together and want and feel that somehow they're gonna change the culture of the state, that's a, you know, that's a fantasy of theirs.

It's not gonna change the culture.

The culture's going to happen with or without them.

And I think it's gonna happen in a very positive direction.

So we are all gonna work together.

We're gonna continue to make Fort Lauderdale and all the cities around us, you know, a welcoming environment as it still is and never, ever stop being.

So we're very hopeful and we'll continue to work together.

Right, folks?

Absolutely.

Well, believe it or not, we're coming to the end of our conversation, but before we go, I want some quick closing thoughts.

The whole purpose of tonight was for education and to enlighten the broader South Florida community.

So Damon, quickly, something that we should walk away with tonight.

When someone tells you in the community that they're hurting, listen to 'em and believe them.

Beautiful.

Robert?

I think that the most important thing to walk away from is that this is a strong community within a community, and never be afraid.

Never be afraid to be out.

Whether you are straight or gay or lesbian or Black or white or green, always be who you are and never apologize for it ever.

Mayor?

You know, whether you're a gay man, a lesbian, transgender, bisexual, or anything in between, right?

If you embrace who you are and you accept who you are, you're far more liberated in life than you are being constrained by denial, and that's the message I would like everyone to walk away with.

[Pam] Robert Boo?

Everyone should be as educated as they possibly can.

Get involved.

And everyone can advocate to their own degree, whether they're sitting at their kitchen table and making phone calls or sending emails, or they're out in the streets marching and showing our strength.

But be educated and get involved.

Good.

Well, we wanna leave you tonight with some thoughts from the mom of a transgender daughter and a young man who was a member of the Gen Z's queer community.

Take a listen.

And I understand that there are some parents who feel that they need to protect their children from this exposure to the realities of there being LGBTQ people on the planet.

And I can only assume that that means that you feel that there's a chance that your child will be influenced to adopt this lifestyle, to choose this lifestyle.

No one's choosing this lifestyle.

No one's choosing to be a part of a horrifically marginalized society.

Your child is what your child is, and teaching them, showing them to be understanding and respectful of all people the way they are is doing them a great service.

My message to parents of LGBTQ+ kids is, I know it's looking real scary, but we need you.

We need voices.

We need people to show up for our queer people, our young queer people who can't leave the state, and you're the perfect person to champion that.

And you can watch Lisa and Max's full stories on our social media @YourSouthFL.

Their lived experiences, like others we heard tonight, are reflective of the vibrant diversity of communities throughout South Florida.

We hope that by sharing these voices of pride, we all learn and grow together.

I wanna thank our panel so much for joining me for this important conversation.

Thank you again so much for being here.

Really appreciate it.

Robert, Robert, Damon and Mayor Trantalis.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm Pam Giganti.

Have a good evening.

[Robert] Thank you.

[Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by Cliff Cideko and the Warten Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by the following.