When I was younger, we tended to move every couple of years. They weren’t all big, cross-country moves, but rather mostly short moves a few hours across Florida’s I-4 corridor and tied to a combination of relocating for my dad’s job — he was in restaurant management — and my mom wanting to be closer to family.
One of those moves brought us to the St. Petersburg area, more specifically Pinellas Park, in the late 1980s. It amazes me when I head over to the Tampa Bay area today how much it has changed, not just in growth but in tolerance. When I lived there it wasn’t that the people of Tampa Bay were homophobic, at least not anymore than any other area was in the ’80s, but there was no talk of the LGBTQ community. They didn’t encourage GSAs in the schools, they didn’t display rainbow-covered merchandise in the storefronts and they certainly did not raise the Pride flag at City Hall each June.
The closest our neighborhood got to celebrating LGBTQ Pride Month was when the kids on our block unknowingly attended the birthday party of this closeted husky gay kid who happened to have been born in June. So to now be preparing to attend the 20th anniversary of St Pete Pride at the end of this month is something that brings me quite a bit of joy and a whole lot of Pride, and Lord knows we need Pride now just as much as I needed it back then.
After years of what felt like great progress during the Obama administration, the country’s acceptance meter has swung backward for the better part of a decade now, and recently it seems the rapid progress of the early 2010s is now rapidly moving in the opposite direction.
From gaining marriage equality, repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and passing The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, we are now banning books on marginalized groups in schools, forbidding teachers from even using words like gay or transgender, and most recently trying to convince people that kids seeing a drag queen perform is a form of child abuse. The audacity of the ultra-conservative right would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has even suggested that he might have the state’s child protective services investigate parents who take their children to drag shows.
It amazes me that what the right deems as “sexualizing children” only applies when it is about the LGBTQ community, but they are fine asking small kids if they have a little boyfriend or girlfriend in school, or taking them to restaurants like Hooters to take photos of their young boys with the waitresses. Again, when I was younger and living in the Tampa Bay area, my uncle liked to take me and my older brother — we were probably about 8 and 9 years old at the time — to Clearwater to get a hot dog from one of the vendor carts on the beach. The reason? Because the vendor carts were tended by young women who wore very revealing bikinis.
All the dads, grandfathers, uncles and leering creepy old men would be lined up, gawking at the women as they prepared their hot dog. And whenever a young boy was escorted to the cart, the lady would smile, lean down and kiss them on their forehead. When this happened to me, I would freeze in terror because as they leaned down to kiss me, their mostly exposed breasts were inches from my face. Someone explain to me how that is just fine but heaven forbid kids see a man dressed as a woman lip synch during brunch.
Now, are all drag shows for all ages? No. Some are very much for adult audiences only, just like not all films or TV shows are for all ages. But if you make your argument that shows like “CoComelon” are endangering the children because shows like “Game of Thrones” exist then you seem ignorant in your stance and uneducated on the topic, and in this case you absolutely are.
It amazes me that these are the people who are writing and enacting laws in this state. As we move ever closer to the midterm elections this November, my hope is that common sense escorts Florida citizens into the voter’s booth because it is quite obviously lacking in many of the GOP candidates.
Speaking of drag, this issue is loaded with drag queens. We take an in-depth look at what it is like to earn a living as a drag queen in Central Florida and Tampa Bay. We also chat with “Drag Race” sensation Rosé, who will appear alongside a dozen other queens for the Werq the World 2022 Tour coming to Orlando July 9 and Tampa July 10.
We also check in with writer-actor Julio Torres about his new picture book and talk with Central Florida performers Doug Ba’aser and Janine Klein about their upcoming “gay, gay, gay” cabaret show.
