Florida’s critical fight for human rights, city by city | Editorial
Four Broward cities have received perfect scores of 100 in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s annual report card, known as the Municipal Equality Index (MEI).
Take a bow, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Wilton Manors and Oakland Park. All four received the highest possible grade from the foundation, which is the educational arm of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group.
This marks the fifth year in a row that Fort Lauderdale has received a score of 100.
Mayor Dean Trantalis said the city’s high marks affirm its status as “a beacon of equality,” with “a welcoming and inclusive environment for all residents, regardless of their background, gender or sexual orientation.”
Eighteen Florida cities were rated, and hundreds across the U.S., for their success and failure to support people who live and work in their communities, regardless of their sexual orientation. This is good news not only for LGBTQ people but for humanity as a whole. It’s more significant than ever in Florida for an obvious reason: the extreme level of intolerance and hostility by Republican policymakers in Tallahassee.
How the ratings work
Benchmarks include anti-discrimination policies in housing, health care, employment and contracting; human rights advocacy by elected officials and city government agencies; the strength of a commitment to an inclusive workplace: and effective leadership on LGBTQ issues by elected city officials.
No Palm Beach County cities were graded. The foundation evaluated the 200 largest cities in the U.S., plus all 50 state capitals, the five largest cities in every state, the 75 cities with the highest proportion of same-sex couples, according to census data, and 98 other cities selected by group leaders.
Other Florida cities with perfect scores were Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg and Orlando. Not every Florida city fared so well. Daytona Beach scored a miserable 27, Hialeah 53 and Jacksonville 76.
In Broward, Pembroke Pines received a score of 76. The county’s second-largest city lost points for, among other things, not having a liaison to the LGBTQ community in the mayor’s office and lack of transgender-inclusive health policies.
These city-by-city efforts toward greater equality in American society take on added importance in Florida because of multiple acts of intolerance that keep occurring at the state level under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican super-majority that controls the state Legislature.
The openly hostile political climate in Tallahassee to the LGBTQ community has rolled back decades of hard-fought, incremental gains in a state that for decades was notorious for its homophobia. Anita Bryant is gone, but she’s not forgotten — and she shouldn’t be.
Florida’s dreadful state rank
The descent to the abyss of intolerance brought Florida to the bottom in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s state equality index, which closely tracks health care benefits for LGBTQ residents, HIV transmission laws, cyberbullying and hate crime laws.
Florida falls into the group’s “state of emergency” category, for such actions as the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” the law derided by its critics as the “Don’t say gay” bill, and the marginalizing of transgender adults and youth, such as by prohibiting trans teens from participating in school sports.
The struggle for equality never ends. Politicians in Tallahassee keep finding new culture war distractions anything to avoid the hard work of, say, solving the state’s property insurance crisis or helping condominium owners cope with staggering new assessments to pay for safety inspections.
The next battleground is pronouns.
A Republican lawmaker, expanding on a law affecting schools that DeSantis signed last spring, wants to restrict the use of personal pronouns by government agencies and limit workplace training on issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Rep. Ryan Chamberlin’s proposal, House Bill 599, on Gender Identity Employment Practices, has been filed for the session that starts in January,
One city at a time
For now, the only way for Florida to escape this hateful darkness is one city at a time.
For example, the city of Orlando noted that this is its 10th year of receiving a perfect MEI score.
“Our work to put inclusion and equity at the forefront of all that we do must and will continue. Orlando will keep showing that love is stronger than hate,” Mayor Buddy Dyer said.
That’s commendable in the city that has felt the tragedy of anti-LGBTQ hatred more than any other, with the horrific shooting at Pulse nightclub that ended 49 young lives. Out of that tragedy, a renewed commitment to inclusion flowered. Its police force was among the first in the U.S. to adopt guidelines for interactions with transgender and nonbinary individuals, along with a Safe Place program and designated liaisons for the LGBTQ community.
In October, the city’s annual Come Out With Pride event drew hundreds of thousands of people downtown and featured official parade entries from the city and Orange County governments, and hundreds of people representing local businesses. That’s the kind of Florida we all deserve.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.