Tag Archives: Tampa

FLORIDA - Tampa Cancels PRIDE Festival After DeSantis Signs ‘Anti-Drag’ Bill.

FLORIDA – Tampa Cancels PRIDE Festival After DeSantis Signs ‘Anti-Drag’ Bill.

Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, Gay News From Around The Globe, , , , ,

Drag Queens banned. Pride events are canceled. Will not even ONE Florida city’s LGBT community stand up to DeSantis and tell him to Sashay Away?

On Thursday, Tampa Pride President Carrie West confirmed that the organization will not host its Pride on the River event this year after a bill concerning “adult live performances” was signed into law Wednesday by Florida dictator Governor Ron DeSantis.

Tampa’s NBC affiliate reports:

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB-1438, titled “Protection of Children,” into law in Tampa on Wednesday. The bill allows the state to “fine, suspend, or revoke the license of any public lodging establishment or public food service establishment if the establishment admits a child to an adult live performance.”
Organizers were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to restrict who sees the performances since the event takes place in such a large, open area. Rather than risk the licenses of participating businesses, organizers canceled the event altogether.

Handouts from the governor’s news conference Wednesday stated that drag shows are considered adult live performances “without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for the age of the child present,” according to the text of the bill.

“It’s disappointing to hear Tampa Pride on the River is canceled,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said in response to the news. “But it doesn’t change the fact that Tampa is and always will be an inclusive, diverse, and welcoming community.”

Tampa Pride Parade is still scheduled to take place next spring.

But will it be prideful? Because as of right now Florida seems to have no PRIDE.

Please, all LGBTQ and Allies. Sign on, share, and participate in a Boycott of Florida travel, tourism, and products.
Federal Judge Strikes Down Tampa's Ban on Conversion Therapy Ex-Gay Torture

Federal Judge Strikes Down Tampa’s Ban on Conversion Therapy Ex-Gay Torture

Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , , ,

A federal judge has struck down Tampa, Florida’s two year ban on the dangerous practice of conversion therapy to minors, a treatment promoted by religious groups as a way to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge William Jung, a Donald Trump appointee ruled that the law can interfere with patient’s rights to privacy, and it may conflict with the rights that parents have in choosing health care for their children.

He also said that the medical boards overseeing mental health licensing already serve as a check for any malpractice.

According to The Tampa Bay Times:

Jung said state medical boards that oversee the licensing of mental health professionals already serve as a check on any malpractice.” Jung also said “no study has come up with a clear picture of whether the practice produces either beneficial or harmful outcomes” and added that Tampa’s ban seemed selective because the city hasn’t put similar scrutiny on “massage therapy, acupuncture, optometry, tattoo parlors and medical labs.

It is apparent that the Florida statutes already provide the City with its desired protection against [sexual orientation change efforts] SOCE. The City and its experts adamantly assert that even non-aversive SOCE violates the prevailing treatment standard of care, and constitutes psychiatric, psychological, and counseling malpractice.

Tampa City Attorney Gina Grimes told the Tampa Bays Times that the judge’s ruling simply showed that the court thinks that states, and not cities, should regulate health care. And it didn’t go into the legality of the city’s banning of the practice.

“The court did not rule on the constitutionality of the city’s ordinance prohibiting conversion therapy. Instead, it found that the states’ health care regulations prevent municipalities from regulating this type of counseling,”

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has a long-standing opposition against the practice of conversion therapy.

The American Psychiatric Association does not believe that same-sex orientation should or needs to be changed, and efforts to do so represent a significant risk of harm by subjecting individuals to forms of treatment which have not been scientifically validated and by undermining self-esteem when sexual orientation fails to change. No credible evidence exists that any mental health intervention can reliably and safely change sexual orientation; nor, from a mental health perspective does sexual orientation need to be changed.”

Evidence has proven that gay conversion therapies increased the risk of negative outcomes, including loss of sexual feeling, anxiety, depression and suicidal feelings. and has led to the deaths of many who have been fortced to undergo it.

You can read Jung’s 50-page opinion HERE

Hateful Florida Rev. T.W. Jenkins Stands By His Decision To Deny Gay Man Funeral

Featured, Gay News From Around The Globe, , , ,

Evil Rev Jenkins
The despicable Rev. T.W. Jenkins of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa, Florida who last week who cold-heartedly canceled at man’s funeral at the last minute after discovering the man was gay and married is standing by his decision and isn’t apologizing for his actions, saying that the ‘trials’ his church is facing in the public eye have “come to make us stronger.”

WTSP  the station that broke the story did a follow-up visit to the Mt. Hope church on Sunday and reports that they were initially not allowed into the building, but were permitted to enter 40 minutes after the service began

In the video below, Jenkins talks about his family’s well-being and thanks his congregation for their prayers.

“My family is doing fine,” he said to claps from the audience. “Church family please remain focused and prayerful … and we will continue to stand on the word of God.”

THIS is “Christianity”?  A bunch of people who applaud themselves for denying a human being dignity in death? The sheer inhumanity and offensiveness of this while parading their hate of those who are different while hiding behind “religion” is beyond appalling.

Pastor Jenkins should be tarred and feathered, his hateful congregation horse-whipped and his “church” brunt to the ground and the land sowed with salt.

And that would be too good for them.

 

 

Florida Baptist Church Cancels Man’s Funeral At The Last Minute After They Find Out He Was Gay

Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , , , ,

Satan Church New Hope Baptist

Totally despicable and disgusting and so heinous.  Something I have not seen since the 1980’s when Funeral Homes refused to bury deceased AIDS patients…….

Less than 18 hours before his husband’s funeral, Kendall Capers was told that the funeral service service was cancelled at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa, FL because members of the congregation and the Pastor of the church read his partners obituary and discovered he was survived by a “husband”. “

Based on our preaching of the scripture, we would have been in error to allow the service in our church,” said New Hope Missionary Baptist’s Pastor T.W. Jenkins. “I’m not trying to condemn anyone’s lifestyle, but at the same time, I am a man of God, and I have to stand up for my principle Jenkins,said who peaches against same-sex marriage, and that it would be “blasphemous” to hold the funeral at his church, reported WFLA-TV.

It was devastating,” said Julie Atwood mother of Julion Evans, who was 42 at the time of his passing. “I did feel like he was being denied the dignity of death.”

“Everyone who knew us knew about our relationship,” Kendall Capers said. “We didn’t keep secrets.”

The family asked for Evans’ funeral to be held at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa. Atwood, Evans’ mother, says she was baptized at the church as a child and several of her family members still attend. Atwood’s current pastor agreed to preach the funeral, but they needed a large church, like New Hope, to accommodate hundreds of mourners from across the country. New Hope agreed and the service was scheduled for July 26.

But when the obituary published in the local newspaper, everything changed.

Because of the abrupt change of plans, Evans’ family scrambled to make new funeral arrangements, and were not unable to notify everyone, and some mourners showed up at the hateful church and missed the funeral.

“I know there are other people that are probably going to be in the same shoes Julion and I were in. I feel like it’s a wrong doing, and nobody should be in those shoes,” Capers said “This is 2014, this is not the 60s or the 70s,. And att the end of the day I just want his wrong-doing to be exposed.”

New Hope Missionary Baptist’s is located at 3005 E Ellicott St, Tampa, FL 33610 and can be reached at (813) 236-3611 if you feel the need to call. They are also on FACEBOOK 

2000+ Protest The Democratic National Convention – Where The Hell Were You Last Week In Tampa?

Gay News From Around The Globe, , , ,

Over 2000 protesters representing a wide range of groups including LGBT marched through Charlotte N.C. today and past the site of the Democratic National Convention.

Now I love a good protest.  And I agree that the Democratic Party can on a helluva lot better on many issues.  But unfortunately they are the best that we have at the moment.

Do the Democrats need to be protested for not doing all that they can on issues?  Hell yes.

But what I would like to know is where were these groups and protestors last week during the Republican National Convention?  Tampa is only 580 miles south of Charlotte in almost a straight line.

But the obstructionist, and “anti- everything that’s good and right” Republicans were not mass protested at all and they should have really known our anger and frustration with 100 times more protestors.

Perhaps Google Maps was broken.  Or perhaps some protestors just too lazy or scared.

*DNC protestor pics courtesy of Joe My God.

GOP Rep Aaron Schock Hits Tampa’s Gay Neighborhood Says Paul Ryan “Should Show Off His Body More”. REALLY!

Gay News From Around The Globe, , , ,

TMZ caught up with GOP closetcase Rep Aaron Schock walking through Tampa’s gay neighborhood of Ybor City supposedly coming from an “event”.  When asked about Paul Ryan’s style Schock replied that the GOP Vice Presidential nominee should “show off his body more” as he walked past a gay bathouse.

But remember everyone, Schocks straight. (To the nearest dick that is)

You can watch the video over at TMZ by CLICKING HERE

Family Research Council Adds Republican Platform Plank To Prosecute Porn Companies

Entertainment, Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, Gay News From Around The Globe, , , , , , ,

Well now the FRC has just gone too far!

As Republicans flocked south for their convention in a city notorious for an abundance of “gentlemen’s clubs,” the GOP was set to adopt language in its official platform calling for strict enforcement of federal obscenity laws, including those concerning illegal distribution of pornography on the Internet, motel and cable TV and even retail stores. The platform revises language from the party’s 2008 document, which opposed child pornography and exploitation, to make an even stronger statement on all pornography: “Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced.” Patrick A. Trueman, president of the anti-obscenity advocacy group Morality in Media, said it was a welcome step forward and credited the work of Family Research Council President Tony Perkins for leading the push. Mr. Perkins, a convention delegate from Louisiana and head of one of the most prominent faith-based organizations in the country, introduced the language. – The Family Research Council vows to prosecute “all forms of pornography by using the GOP

For the GOP, a party that claims to want government out of citizens’ lives, they sure spend a lot of time obsessing over, and trying to control, what the citizens do in the privacy of their own homes.

When the Religious Right first came along in the early 1980’s, then known as the Moral Minority this message from the Adult Video Association was tacked onto the beginning or end of every adult movie in the Unites States

Looks like its time to dust this video off and start playing it again.

Ironically which states purchase the most porn?

It’s the RED STATES. It’s true. Look it up.