Ocala’s quiet Pride month

File photo from 2022 Pride Festival. People look over Pride flags for sale during the Pride Festival on the Ocala Downtown Square in Ocala, Fla. on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2022.

June 2023’s Pride Month couldn’t have been much quieter in the Ocala metro as a predominantly conservative community ponders new Florida legislation targeting the state’s LGBTQ+ citizens that took and renews what feels like an old conversation about the morality of the celebration.

Florida has received national attention for laws focused on sexual orientation and gender identity. Last year, then-local State Rep. Joe Harding, who later resigned after facing several federal felony fraud charges in connection with illegally receiving COVID-19 relief, earned headlines for his controversial Parental Rights in Education measure, which opponents nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay’’ bill.

Far-right Republicans, part of the GOP’s supermajority in the Legislature, expanded the bill this year and created additional legislation aimed at the trans community, all under the premise that it would protect children. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the measures, which took effect July 1.

Some critics say Florida’s legislative measures reflect an intent to erase LGBTQ+ from discussions and censor Floridians, particularly the estimated 114,000 queer youth in Florida.

The “Gazette” reached out to locals to see how they felt about recent legislation.

For 17 years, Angie Lewis, a local philanthropist and community leader who owns a local insurance agency, has hung up the Pride flag at her office. But this year, she paused the practice.

Lewis was quick to say that it wasn’t because she is wavering in her support for equal rights for the LGTBQ+ community. Her decision was driven by a desire to protect those near to her from possible harm.

“I didn’t hang it this year because of my employees,” she said. “Because this subject has become such a divisive partisan issue, I didn’t want my team to have to deal with any negative ramifications.”

Lewis said the waning of respectful dialogue about subjects people disagree with or hold different convictions about is driving society backward, adding that fear and anger are driving our political discourse. Since college, Lewis said, she has sought a diverse group of friends, including those in the LGTBQ+ community, and has sought to make everyone feel safe and welcome at her business.

Lewis, who says she is a Christian, is concerned that well-meaning Christians use Scripture to force their opinions on others when it was Jesus himself who, according to the Bible, welcomed and ate with those his religious community shunned.

“After all,” said Lewis, “Jesus said you will know my people not by their political stand against particular lifestyles. He said you’ll know my people by their love. As Christians, it’s not our job to judge. It’s our job to love.”

Bishop James D. Stockton III, Sr. Pastor of the Greater New Hope Church, in the Silver Springs Shores Community of Marion County, says he preaches that all sex outside of marriage is sin. Yet, he says he welcomes all sinners, including himself, to praise God and that is not to the exclusion of the LGBTQ+ community.

“One of the problems in our churches today is that we want to categorize and rate sin,’’ he said. “We feel the need to focus on whatever is believed to be the Top Three.”

However, Stockton says if you believe in hell, then you must subscribe to the idea that “It’s a place for all sinners and all types of sin.”

“The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short. So, whether it is homosexuality, going five miles over the posted speed limit, not paying our taxes, lying, stealing, gossiping, hiding money in some Cayman Island bank, or cheating, if we do not repent, we are all subject to going to hell. We must obey God-given and allowed authority,” he told the “Gazette.”

Stockton said that too many times we ask elected officials to legislate things that should be the responsibility of the family and/or the church.

He added that it is wrong to ostracize people because of fear and not taking the time to know a person.

“(Legislators) are straining at gnats,’’ he said. “Why are we so focused on such a small demographic group of people when in our great state of Florida more people die from guns and bullets, cancer from cigarettes, domestic violence and human trafficking?

“The message of the church should be love, for the Bible teaches that love covers a multitude of sins,’’ Stockton said. “For years, I didn’t understand that, until I remembered my grandmother saying, “Sometimes you need to love the hell out of them.”

Stockton said the small size of the LGBTQ+ community within the billions of people on the Earth makes  them an easy target. “It’s almost like, pick on that community for they can’t fight back. The issue is that they can and will.”

In a 2022 interview with the “Gazette,’’ Harding said his bill’s Don’t Say Gay nickname and subsequent media attention were political moves to “tap into those fighting for gay equality. They were trying to tap into the rage and anger, mostly from the left, and get the gay community to fight us.”

DeSantis and other Republican lawmakers, including Harding before he lost his office, publicly maintain this targeting of the LGBTQ+ community is more about determining what activities are “age appropriate” and is not intended as an attack on any group.

State Rep. Yvonne Hinson, a Gainesville Democrat, disputed that reasoning. Any legislation aimed at protecting children should generally bring a nonpartisan tone to the conversation, she said, but that was not the case.

“Recently, a conservative legislator exclaimed from the House floor: ‘Terrorists hate gays as much as we Republicans do!’ Of course, he had to go back and retract that statement, but like a bullet once shot, it can’t come back. The LGBTQ community, much like the African American community, feels marginalized and under attack. So much so that both communities have issued travel advisories warning tourists and convention-goers about the hazards of visiting Florida if you’re Black or gay but most especially if you are trans because the trans community feels so threatened that they are leaving the state. The “new” conservative (community) is proving itself to be extreme in all that they think and do, including to hate what they hate.”

The “Gazette” reached out to other local state representatives, State Sen. Keith Perry and State Reps. Bobby Payne and Stan McClain, to discuss whether they believe conservative Republicans consider themselves to be anti-LGTBQ+, but none of them responded.

The concern that the GOP-led legislation has had a chilling effect on the LGTBQ+ community was echoed by other locals.

Kristen Carey, a bi-trans woman, started transitioning at the age of 24 in 2017 and has lived between Marion and Citrus counties during that time. Carey was married to a cisgender woman and was working at a church. The desire she struggled with to be “Kristen” led to her being fired from the church and divorced.

Carey’s education and background are in elementary education and ministry work, but during her transition she had to find work in retail and sales. She has tried to find a church that will accept her and let her participate and serve, a calling that has not waned despite not being accepted by church leaders or some partitioners over the years.

Carey says she finally found a church in Homosassa that lets her volunteer and participate in the choir.

Carey goes to the places she feels safe, but even then, sometimes, people will hurl insults or complain to establishments about her choice of bathrooms. She says she felt “a little safer walking down the street” in Marion County from harassment than in Citrus County.

Carey said the threats have lessened as she has become more “passable” as a woman. But over the past year, Carey has seen a shift.

“Previously, people would ask questions from a place of curiosity or ignorance,’’ she said. “But I’ve noticed that things are changing. People are more brazen in what they say or yell or post because now they feel that is the way the community is going.”

“Even watching the backlash to the recent Bud Light advertisement was a huge eye-opener. So many people who I had thought were allies and friends suddenly were in upheaval because their favorite beer was sponsoring a trans person. I feel people are more brazen and feel more brave coming out now to be anti-trans than they were previously. I felt like we were heading in a good direction, then all of a sudden everything halted and went in reverse.”

Carey feels like elected officials are setting the example that others are picking up and Carey wonders if she will ever be able to return to work at a school. Carey said she is “terrified” that more legislation intent on keeping kids from being around trans individuals could be put in place.

Currently, Carey is working on her master’s degree in hopes to advance in the field of behavioral therapy, where she currently works with kids. Kids sometimes will ask Carey if she’s a boy or a girl. “I tell them I’m a girl,’’ she said. “But I’m constantly worried about how to answer correctly.”

Nicole Kopolovits, age 28, is a local firefighter paramedic, a recently married lesbian and a practicing Jew. She told the “Gazette” that she was fortunate to know at a young age that she was gay, and her family and friends were accepting. By the time she was a sophomore in high school, she was openly in a lesbian relationship.

“I was fortunate in that I had an accepting family,’’ she said. “However, I can see how if I didn’t, I would have sought out a conversation with a trusted teacher. It would concern me to hear that young LGBTQ people may not have support networks while trying to figure out this stuff because teachers were prohibited from discussing it.”

One local business owner says the concerns about drag shows in particular are overblown.

Meigan Sardinia has hosted drag shows at her restaurant The Black Sheep on Broadway in downtown Ocala for three years now. “Most of the shows are sold out,’’ she said. As for the possibility that a minor would be allowed into her business for a drag show, Sardinia noted, “We have always had a 21 and older policy in place.”

As for how the recent legislation is impacting drag shows and in other towns, she said, “I think it’s unfair for other drag shows to be targeted because of the parent’s choice. And not all drag shows are provocative.”

For years, The Black Sheep had a flag hanging at the end of the bar promoting DeSantis for president in 2024 with the message, “Make America Florida.” Sardinia said the flag was a gift from a patron and was hung back before the Trump-Biden election in 2020.

However, that flag has recently been taken down.

“The drag queens didn’t mind that it was there; however, I noticed recently that the flag was starting to hurt people, so I took it down,” she said.

Generally speaking, Sardinia said she stays out of politics. “Honestly, right now, it’s hard to find any leader that I can entirely support.”

Sardinia says she has become close friends through the years with the drag queens. “They work hard to make a living doing their show. I’m happy to see everyone supporting them so generously during the shows.”

When the “Gazette” asked Carey about what she thinks the public misunderstands about trans people, she said, “I think the biggest thing is that none of us chose to be this way. If I could have been happy living as a man, I would have stayed that way. None of us would choose to get the hate and the discrimination, the hormones, the weekly injections, the looks we get, the body dysmorphia we get, none of us would have chosen this.”

“Trans people aren’t doing this as a disguise or a cover up, we are doing this so we can live. If I couldn’t transition, it would be a death sentence. I would only last a few months,” Carey said.