If anyone knows how to harm and disappoint the LGBTQ community during Pride Month, it’s Republicans in power. As Daily Kos recently covered, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed an anti-trans bill into law to stop trans girls from participating in girls’ sports teams, following the lead of a handful of other GOP-controlled states. On Wednesday, DeSantis made a stunning number of budget cuts to programs meant to serve the LGBTQ community in the state, including one that offers counseling support to survivors of the Pulse massacre of 2016, a shooting that left 49 people dead.

Those funds totaled a cool $900,000, and would have gone toward mental health and housing services for the LGBTQ community in central Florida. Let’s look at what community members, including Florida Democrats and those in the advocacy space, are saying about the governor’s disappointing series of decisions just a mere few days into Pride Month. 

“Timing matters,” Democratic state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, who is openly gay, pointed out, as reported by local outlet WWSB. “What message are LGBT people meant to receive from Gov. DeSantis other than that this is an insult to them? The Orlando community right now is bracing for the five-year remembrance, and for Gov. DeSantis to veto funding for Pulse survivors and families is just cruel.”

Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat whose district includes the Pulse site in Orlando, described DeSantis as “a homophobe and a transphobe who doesn’t actually care about Floridians who are different from him,” as reported by Click Orlando. Eskamani was among the officials who requested the denied funds.

“He looked me in the eyes and told me that he would always support those of us who had been impacted by the shooting,” Brandon Wolf, who survived the Pulse massacre, told The Washington Post in reference to meeting with DeSantis in 2019.

How did the specifics of this enormous budget cut break down? $150,000 was directed to an LGBTQ resource center in Orlando, called the Orlando United Assistance Center at the LGBT+ Center Orlando. Part of that $150,000 would have gone toward mental health services for survivors of the Pulse massacre as well as impacted family members.

The Zebra Coalition, a youth housing project, would have received $750,000 in funding. Given what we know about disproportionate rates of LGBTQ people (including youth) experiencing homelessness, it’s positively shameful not to give every dollar possible to such a cause.

“Now we are going to have to go back to square one and figure out how we are going to fundraise,” Zebra Coalition Executive Director Heather Wilkie told Click Orlando, adding that they’re not “giving up on the dream” but are, understandably, “disappointed.”

People on Twitter have been calling out DeSantis for his actions during Pride Month.

It’s been said before, but the refrain still stands: The cruelty is the point.

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