Florida LGBTQ

With Florida cities facing pressure from state and federal officials to remove rainbow crosswalks and other "non-standard markings" from roads and pavements, WLRN is trying to keep tabs on street art in South Florida, and also get a check on how our communities feel about them.

An emergency meeting is planned for Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale as that city and others across Florida are facing state orders to remove rainbow crosswalks by early next month. The state threatens to withhold funding if cities don't comply. These crosswalks celebrate LGBTQ pride and other causes.

Delray Beach police are searching for the driver of a pickup truck that burned tire marks across the city’s rainbow-colored LGBTQ Pride mural last month — the third time the intersection has been vandalized since the mural was first painted in 2021.

A divided federal appeals court Wednesday backed a 2023 Florida law that requires teachers to use pronouns that align with their sex assigned at birth, rejecting arguments that the law violated First Amendment rights of a transgender teacher in Hillsborough County. A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, overturned a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued last year to block enforcement of the law against high-school teacher Katie Wood.

The WorldPride 2025 Parade kicks off Saturday in Washington, D.C., with a 1,000-foot Rainbow Flag made from pieces of the Gilbert Baker Foundation’s original 2003 Key West “Sea to Sea” flag.

“Once again, we’ve done what many thought was impossible: not one anti-LGBTQ bill passed this [60-day] session,” said Equality Florida Executive Director Nadine Smith in a statement on Saturday.

One of NPR's best reads in 2020, Swimming in the Dark, is being adapted into an Opera. Act One is set to be performed in Key West this week.

A federal appellate-court panel heard arguments Tuesday in a challenge to a Florida law requiring educators to use pronouns that align with their sex assigned at birth, in a case that has drawn national attention from the Biden administration, teachers unions and LGBTQ advocates.

For the first time, the U.S. Census Bureau has collected national data on sexual orientation and gender identity related to disaster displacement.

Keechl was an advocate for the LGBTQ community before and after his time in public office.

More than 70 organizations joined the rally against legislation that restricts the rights of women, minorities and LGBTQ people.

The director of Fort Lauderdale's Stonewall National Museum & Archives, housing the country's largest lending library of LGBTQ literature, talks to WLRN about the importance of the decades-old institution at a time when state government is restricting education.