Josh Bell speaks to the crowd at the State of the LGBTQ+ Communities event at Orlando City Hall. (Photo by Jeremy Williams)
ORLANDO | One Orlando Alliance’s Josh Bell completed his tenure as the coalition’s executive director with the State of the LGBTQ+ Communities event at Orlando City Hall Nov. 15.
Bell became the Alliance’s second executive director in October 2020 following the organization’s founding director Jennifer Foster’s two-year stint in the position. The Alliance have not yet named a successor for Bell.
“In the coming months, the Alliance will enter a period of evaluation of its structure and role in the nonprofit ecosystem of Central Florida guided by the Board of Directors, members of its Coalition, and key local stakeholders. The Alliance will be engaged in strategic conversations about future growth and effectiveness for the immediate future to fulfill their vision of transforming Central Florida into a community where ALL LGBTQ+ people can belong and thrive,” the Alliance stated in a press release Nov. 14.
Bell’s final act as the coalition’s executive director was to host the event that revealed key findings found in the Alliance’s “We Belong Here” survey, a first-of-its-kind, LGBTQ-focused survey in Central Florida — funded by Contigo Fund and facilitated by Polis Institute — launched this past summer to gather information in an array of areas including basic demographic data, household size, education level, annual income, health care access, mental health access, stigma, sexual and gender identities, housing stability, religious affiliation, family makeups, citizenship status and more.
Dr. Bahiyyah Maroon, chief executive officer at Polis Institute, presented several of the survey’s findings to the crowd, first breaking down who actually took the survey.
“As we look at these answers, we should think about who we were not able to reach when we conducted this survey,” Maroon said. “We know that these numbers don’t statistically match the queues of our community. In the future, we would want to ask what it is we need to do better in our outreach.”
Looking at the survey, respondents skewed mostly gay, white and male identifying, with the lesbian and Black communities particularly underrepresented. The survey also found that those who responded to the survey, more than half said they have an annual income of more than $80,000, one third reported an annual income of over $100,000 and only 12% said they have children under the age of 18.
“What that means and what you want to be thinking about as activists, as organizers, as allies is that the demographic out there is showing us there’s a community capable of being mobilized,” Maroon said. “This is a community that has disposable income, it’s a community that has extra time.”
The survey also found that members of Central Florida’s LGBTQ community avoid being open about their sexual orientation in many spaces for fear of a negative reaction, with nearly one third of respondents saying they are not out at work or church, and a quarter of respondents stating they are not comfortable being out in public spaces and on public transit. The survey also found that bisexual individuals are significantly more likely to avoid being open about their sexual orientation compared to other groups.
The lack of members of the community being open was most alarming when it came to health care where nearly 33% of respondents answered that they never share their sexual orientation with health care providers.
“This is a relatively privileged sample group, so what this is telling us is regardless of privilege … regardless of status … our community is walking into health care facilities where their lives are on the line and not feeling that they can say this is who I am,” Maroon said.
Respondents did note that 26Health, LGBTQ health centers and the VA clinics and hospital are health care spaces they have found to be particularly welcoming.
“I did not see that coming,” Maroon said of the VA. The positive feedback on Central Florida’s VA didn’t come as a surprise to Keri Griffin, Orlando VA’s LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Program Coordinator & Special Emphasis Program Manager, who has been working for the last 12 years to make Orlando’s VA a welcoming environment to LGBTQ veterans.
“I’m happy to say visual queues like rainbow lanyards, pronoun posters up on the walls, things like that; I have had a lot of veterans give me positive feedback that they feel like they are being seen and heard and validated,” Griffin says. “Plus we have more options in the veteran’s records now with their preferred names, their pronouns, their sexual orientation, their gender identity, which again makes them feel like this is my health care system and this is where I’m going to get the care that I need, deserve and earned with my service.”
Another positive takeaway from the survey, Maroon said within the actual city, “a majority of respondents said that Orlando is a place that they generally feel comfortable as a member of the community.”
Speaking with Watermark earlier this month, Bell said the Alliance intends to repeat the “We Belong Here” survey in Central Florida every two years.
For more information on the One Orlando Alliance and it’s work, visit OneOrlandoAlliance.org.
