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Credit: DisneyLast year, during The Walt Disney Company’s feud with Florida Gov Ron DeSantis, the Human Rights Campaign issued a travel advisory to the LGBTQ+ community. The nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group told its members not to visit Florida because of the “devastating impacts of laws that are hostile to the LGBTQ community.”
The feud with Governor DeSantis and Disney started over the company’s response to the Parental Rights in Education Act, known by its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. However, now that the feud has ended, it appears safe for the LGBTQ community to travel to the state.
However, this week, the LGBTQ community learned that it still may not be safe for them to travel to Florida. Visit Florida, Florida’s official tourism website, quietly removed the LGBTQ Travel section from its website without notifying anyone.
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Keith Blackburn, who heads the Greater Fort Lauderdale LGBT Chamber of Commerce, told the Orlando Sentinel:
It’s just disgusting to see this. They seem to want to erase us. It’s difficult when these kinds of stories come out, and the state does these things, and we hear people calling for a boycott.
On one level, it’s embarrassing to have to explain why people should come to South Florida and our destination when the state is doing these things.
It is unclear precisely who ordered the state to remove the LGBTQ Travel section from the website. Visit Florida is a partnership between the tourism industry and the state, with Florida contributing $50 million a year to the website.
According to the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, the state generates $333 million in tourism revenue daily, and tourists bring $35.2 billion into the state each year.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that destinations like South Florida, Key West, St Petersburg, and Wilton Manors make millions off LGBTQ travel, and many businesses featured on the Visit Florida website make millions from LGBTQ+ tourism.
Before its removal from the Visit Florida website, the LGBTQ travel section promoted the state as:
There’s a sense of freedom to Florida’s beaches, the warm weather and the myriad activities — a draw for people of all orientations, but especially appealing to a gay community looking for a sense of belonging and acceptance.
There is no telling if/when the LGBTQ travel section will return to Visit Florida or if it will be gone forever. There is also no way of knowing what role Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis played in its removal.
For now, the LGBTQ community will have to be once again leery of traveling to the state.
What do you think of Visit Florida removing its LGBTQ travel section?