New Billboard Campaign Greets Visitors to DeSantis’s Florida: ‘The Sunshine “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” State’

Visitors to Tallahassee, Tampa, Orlando, and South Florida are being greeted by new billboards this week welcoming them to “Florida: The Sunshine ‘Don’t Say Gay or Trans’ State.” The billboards, which are being placed in key areas across the state with high visitor traffic and visibility, including near airports and along large interstate highways, are part of a new advertising campaign launched by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. The billboards will raise public awareness around the ways Florida’s image has been irreversibly damaged by the new “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law, which is designed to silence teachers from talking about LGBTQ+ issues or people – further stigmatizing and isolating LGBTQ+ kids and also undermining existing protections for LGBTQ+ students, as well as yesterday’s decision by the Governor DeSantis’s Department of Health to release a statement attacking the established standards of age-appropriate, medically-necessary, and often life-saving care for transgender youth.

“Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay or Trans’ law is outrageous and discriminatory. It needs to be repealed immediately. This billboard campaign is designed to make people confront what this terrible law really does: censor and silence educators and isolate LGBTQ+ students and their families,” said Joni Madison, Interim President of the Human Rights Campaign. “Florida cannot be considered the ‘Sunshine State’ when Governor Ron DeSantis is putting so many of its constituents in harm’s way. Governor DeSantis can try to tell teachers what they can teach, can try to tell kids what they can read, and can try to tell students what they can learn - but he cannot tell LGBTQ+ people who we can be.  LGBTQ+ people are teachers, are parents, and yes, are students too - and we are going to keep fighting until this law is off the books.

According to the Public Opinion Research Lab (PORL) at the University of North Florida, 49% of Floridians opposed the legislation while only 40% supported it. Opposition for the bill is even stronger in younger populations. A majority of Floridians between the ages of 18 and 24 — recent secondary school graduates — disapproved of efforts to erase LGBTQ+ people in classrooms.