Autocrats Must Be Told ‘No’ Or They Won’t Stop
Delray Beach, FL – Truth Wins Out urged the leaders in several Florida communities to openly defy an intrusive state edict by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to remove rainbow-colored crosswalks. In a petty, autocratic move, that brazenly abrogates local control, the state sent threatening letters to Delray Beach and Key West demanding that they eliminate the rainbow crosswalks by Sept. 3, or the state will remove them against their will. To add insult, Florida would bill these cities for the removal.
The Sun Sentinel reported that Steven C. Braun, the southeast Florida district secretary of the state Department of Transportation, cautioned: “Any additional violations by the City of Delray Beach shall be cause for the immediate withholding of state funds.”
“We urge Delray Beach and Key West to stand by their principles and reject this outrageous intrusion into local control,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Autocratic bullies like Ron DeSantis must be emphatically told ‘No’, or they won’t stop their authoritarian overreach. If you don’t take a stand now and say ‘enough’, there is no limit to what they might impose on localities with their high-handed, dictatorial decrees.”
Multiple Florida communities, including Delray Beach, Key West, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Orlando, have resisted Florida’s demand to marginalize LGBTQ people by removing the crosswalks, which signify support and inclusion.
“These are some of the most LGBTQ-friendly communities in the nation,” said TWO’s Besen. “It is incredibly arrogant—and smacks of Big Government–for the state to impose its backward views on these progressive communities. Such imperial strong arming from DeSantis is ironic, considering Republicans are supposed to stand for local control.”
According to the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel:
On July 1, President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, wrote in a social media post that “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.”
DeSantis’s transportation secretary, Jared Perdue, wrote a day later that Florida wants to “keep our transportation facilities free & clear of political ideologies.”
The Trump and DeSantis administrations are gaslighting Floridians by pretending their transparently anti-LGBTQ campaign is about traffic safety.
“These rainbow crosswalks are not dangerous to drivers,” Besen said. “What they are dangerous to is the narrative that being gay is something shameful that must be hidden. That’s why DeSantis and Trump are desperate to remove them—because they symbolize pride, authenticity, and community. Public officials in Florida deserve our full support for rejecting this politics of hate and choosing inclusion instead.”
About Truth Wins Out
Truth Wins Out is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that works to advance liberty and democracy, protect the rights of LGBTQ people and other minorities, combat religious extremism, and fight against the spread of disinformation.
Media Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director, wbesen@truthwinsout.org