Miami queer filmmaker KAREEM TABSCH gets a prestigious ELLIE AWARD to help finance his new doc on the gay-hating ANITA BRYANT

The last estimated LGBTQ population in Florida (in 2020) was almost 900K ….. making it the 4th largest US State for gay men and women. Yet, it seems like we are still fighting for our very existence, even though homosexuality was legalized in 2002 and same-sex marriage since 2015.   Only this week, the latest homophobic Florida Governor encouraged a committee on Tuesday to  take up a “don’t say gay or trans at work” bill that would require public employees to be identified in form as either male or female, and which would bar employers from directing workers to use pronouns besides he or she. That’s only a year after hE signed four bills restricting LGBTQ rights, including a measure that expands what critics have called the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law,  and another that will ban transition-related care for minors.

However, Florida’s history and legacy of hate against our community goes way back to 1977 when Miss Orange Juice ran a Save Our Children (sic) Campaign to make it legal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.  Despite a nationwide campaign by the LGBTQ community…….. and Anita Bryant having a pie smashed into her face, she won. And it took until 1998 for Dade County to repeal it and replace the status norm.  Some of us will still not drink orange juice even now!

Bryant’s story has faded somewhat which is sad as the history of the struggle for gay rights in the US (and thought the world) should be recorded.  And preferably from within the LGBTQ community.

This is why on the same day that De Santis was arguing for more of our rights to be takeN away in Tallahasse, in Miami the prestigious OLLIE ARTS ORGANISATION granted one of their coveted  ELLIE AWARDS  to local queer filmmaker Kareem Tabsch to help fund his new documentary SAVE OUR CHILDREN telling Anita Bryant’s story …. warts and all. This will be Tabsch’s 3rd film documenting some of the history of Miami Beach life, but to QG, this will be his most important one to date.

In recent months all the politIcal mayhem caused by the current occupant of the White House’s determination to actual re-write our country’s history, makes the needs for films like Tabsch’s even more vital than ever.

PS Miss Bryant died last year after having being declared Bankrupt just twice less than Trump.  Part of her legacy to the world is the fact she had a gay granddaughter !!!!