Organisers cancel Pride events in Florida amid safety fears

Kristina Bozanich knew that this year’s Pride month event in the Florida town of St Cloud would have to be modified to comply with a new law approved by Governor Ron DeSantis last month. One in a series of bills signed by DeSantis this year that escalated his assault on LGBTQ+ rights, the Protection of Children Act prohibits minors from attending “sexually explicit performances” and authorises the fining of businesses that allow children to attend and suspending or revoking their alcohol licences.

- Joseph Contreras

The inaugural Pride month event Bozanich organi sed in St Cloud last year featured an open-air parade and a drag show. This year, the 30-year-old photographer scheduled a private event at a gym that would include a drag show and would be open only to adults who had bought tickets.

News of the protection of Children law and the appearance of a road sign in the nearby neighbourhood of Lake Nona that read “kill all gays” prompted all four drag performers to cancel. That forced Bozanich to scrap the event.

The passage of similar laws targeting drag performances in other Republican-controlled state legislatures has cast a pall over this year’s Pride celebrations, including in Texas, Montana and Arkansas. Organisers in Tennessee are awaiting a federal judge’s ruling on the constitutionality of state legislation that places restrictions on where “adult cabaret” can be staged.

A drag show scheduled to take place last week at Nellis air force base in Nevada was cancelled after Department of Defense officials advised organisers that the performance would contradict the defence secretary Lloyd Austin’s recent congressional testimony that the Pentagon would not fund such events.