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Pride Month Comes to a Close [1]

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Date: 2022-07-01

Pride Month has come to a close and in cities around the world we celebrated the achievements of the LGBTQ+ community and honored those who came before. In the midst of these celebrations, we were starkly reminded of how tenuous our freedoms are

We stood in horror last week as the Dobbs decision overturned 50 years of reproductive freedom - and saw the specter of the past rise as we read Justice Thomas’s concurrence. The dangers of repealing Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges for the LGBTQ+ community are very real.

This is deeply personal for me - I look at my husband everyday and I’m grateful that we were married in a small outdoor ceremony during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic before our right to marry could be snatched away from us. I worry that some day soon the police might raid our home for the simple reason that we are two gay men living together in rural Florida.

Fear has crept back into the minds of so many of us that have lived through the era of police raids and rampant gay-bashing. We lament that another generation may have to face the same horrors we did.

On July 1st, the rainbow washing will come down. Companies will once again show us that they cater to us in June only to get access to our buying power that Forbes estimates as being in the trillions. These same companies that run Pride marketing campaigns have steered nearly a million dollars to anti-LGBTQ+ legislators and candidates in the last two years alone.

Companies like the Seminole Hard Rock who claimed to support our community by having floats in Pride parades and lighting up their hotel towers in rainbow colors quickly return to supporting Republicans who seek to destroy the LGBTQ+ Community’s right to exist.

We must not allow our community to be pushed back into the dark days of the last century. We must make a stand financially, publicly and at the ballot box in November for our own sake and for future generations. We must show the radical Right that we won’t go quietly back to the margins of society. .

Yours in solidarity,

Nathan Sharp

President

The LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus of the Nature Coast Region

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/1/2107849/-Pride-Month-Comes-to-a-Close

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