LGBT groups joined the NAACP in piling on the state of Florida, issuing travel warnings declaring Florida unsafe for the LGBT community as well as black people.
“In the wake of Florida’s most anti-LGBTQ legislative session in history, Equality Florida and the Human Rights Campaign have issued an updated travel advisory that details risks associated with relocation or travel to the state,” the organizations said in a statement. The groups allege that anti-LGBT laws, gun laws, abortion restrictions, and “racial prejudice” make the Sunshine State a “hostile” place for those who identify as LGBT.
“While not a blanket recommendation against travel nor a call for boycott, the travel advisory outlines the devastating impacts of laws that are hostile to the LGBTQ community,” the statement said.
The order comes even as the state’s second-largest city, Miami, ranks as one of the “gayest” cities in the country. The LGBT community in Miami-Dade County even has its own Chamber of Commerce. Two other Florida cities, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, were ranked the second- and third-most LGBT-friendly cities in America last year by LawnStarter.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton joined the criticism of the state Tuesday. “Ron DeSantis’s ultra-MAGA Florida isn’t safe for people of color, LGBTQ+ people, or even multi-billion dollar corporations,” she tweeted.
The warning comes a week after the NAACP warned black people to avoid traveling to Florida due to “openly hostile” policies. The NAACP’s “travel advisory” did not list any figures. The Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday that data show that “black Floridians enjoy lower unemployment, higher median incomes, and lower rates of both hate crimes and police killings than their counterparts in other states.”
When confronted with the contradictory data, the president of the group called it “propaganda language.”
“First of all, this propaganda language over the last several years wasn’t because of anything [Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.)] did in policy,” NAACP president Derrick Johnson said Monday after he was asked on CNN about a statement from the Florida Chamber of Commerce saying the state is the “number-one spot in the United States for black-owned businesses.”
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