Tagged: LGBT

Dorn Martell doesn't act surprised to hear gay culture is hot right now after a perfect storm of recent events from legal rulings on same-sex marriage to headlines of professional athletes coming out.

For News Service of Florida

A senator who last month opposed a bill that would create domestic partnerships for unmarried couples will support a new, narrower version when it comes up Tuesday in the Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee.

Some two dozen states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Florida isn’t one of them.

According to News Service of Florida, however, a bill filed in the House Thursday hopes to change that:

The stands in front of the teenagers’ chairs hold the same sheet music – the theme to “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”  But each of the young musicians has a different story to tell about anti-gay bullying.

Like the bi-sexual flutist, who says she’s pretty much been bullied all her life.

And the gay saxophonist, who describes how it “really gets to you inside and sometimes you start believing what people are saying.”

Even the heterosexual clarinetist is not immune.  She feels too many of her classmates use the word “gay” to describe something bad.

The News Service of Florida

Florida voters are overwhelmingly against charging college tuition based on what people study, skeptical that degrees can be offered for $10,000 and strongly against setting different educational goals based on race, a new poll has found.

On Election Day this year, Florida went from having zero openly gay lawmakers in the state Legislature to two.

David Richardson won a seat in the Florida House representing Miami Beach and Joe Saunders won a seat representing a part of Orlando. Both men are openly gay.

Up until last week, Florida was the biggest state in the U.S. to have never elected an openly gay person to office in their state legislature. 

Chuck Wolfe, president of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, says that Florida was actually part of a national trend.