Florida, Texas Worst Of The Worst Homophobic States And Getting Worse
Homophobia is spreading like a cancer with Florida and Texas leading the way.
A trio of brazenly homophobic state lawmakers from the land that produced Anita Bryant, the Pulse nightclub, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and “Don’t Say Gay,” are doing their best to push the Sunshine State to subterranean levels of immorality.
Most recently, Republican state Rep. Jeff Holcom commented during arguments for a bill to bolster the military, that “Our terrorist enemies hate homosexuals more than we do.”
Holcom made his vile comments while he was urging colleagues to support a bill to press Congress to “restore” the military’s “warfighting ethos” and rid it of “woke social engineering and experimentation practices.” Holcom apparently was referring to LGBTQ rights as “woke social engineering and experimentation” as he talked about his party’s abhorrence of gay people.
“Isis, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda, those are the folks who discriminate. We bombed a building in 2017 like we never usually do. We bombed it because they threw homosexuals off that building,” Holcomb said. “Our terrorist enemies hate homosexuals more than we do.”
Holcomb said that gays are “the ones who discriminate our job in the military, our Navy Creed. ‘I’m committed to excellence and fair treatment of all.’ That’s what we learn in boot camp. That’s what we drill into ourselves each and every day.”
Holcom is a Realtor, lieutenant in the Navy Reserve and a Christian. He graduated from the University of Maryland and has a master’s from the on-line American Military University. He has been a reservist in Naval military intelligence for more than 16 years and in 2016, was deployed to the Middle East to fight ISIS in Operation Inherent Resolve. He was part of the Combat Ops Team planning air missions in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan where he earned a Navy Commendation Medal and a Global War on Terror Expeditionary Medal.
Holcom and his wife, Stacey, have two daughters. Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2022, Holcom’s interests are rugged; football, history, military and politics, according to his legislative biography.
Then there was Florida GOP state Sen. Ileana Garcia who has a family member who is transgender and said during a 2022 debate for the Parental Rights in Education bill (a euphemism for the “Don’t Say Gay” law) that “gay is not a permanent thing, LGBT is not a permanent thing.”
Garcia assumed office on Nov. 17, 2020, and is the daughter of Cuban exiles. She served as the first Hispanic female Deputy Press Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under trump. Garcia also founded the group “Latinas for Trump” and in 2016 was the trump campaign’s communications director for Latino outreach.
Ultra-conservative, Republican state Sen. Dennis Baxley is one of Florida’s leading voices of anti-LGBTQ protections and sponsored the Senate version of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibits the discussion of gender identity in elementary schools.
Baxley attended Miami-Dade Community College, where he received a degree in funeral service in 1975. A devout southern Baptist, Baxley returned to Ocala, where he founded Hiers-Baxley Funeral Services.
Baxley, 70, is a descendant of a soldier who fought for the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. He first assumed office on Nov. 8, 2016 and was named President pro tempore of the Florida Senate on Nov. 22, 2022, coincidentally the anniversary of the JFK assassination.
He previously served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2000 to 2007 and again from 2010 until his election to the Senate
Baxley has sponsored anti-LGBT and “stand your ground” legislation, he opposed a two-year moratorium on the sale of semi-automatic AR-15 rifles, and he delayed the Florida Slavery Memorial. He opposes removal of Confederate monuments and memorials and sponsored the failed Florida House Bill H-837, which would have allowed students to sue educators for not tolerating their views.
In 2019, Baxley sponsored legislation that would require public schools to teach skepticism about evolution and about climate change. He was reported to use the “Replacement theory” in relation to the abortion debate in the United States. The replacement theory is a bogus claim that Democrats are concocting programs to overcome the number of Republicans, including abortion and immigration.
“When you get a birth rate less than 2 percent, that society is disappearing, and it’s being replaced by folks that come behind them and immigrate, don’t wish to assimilate into that society and they do believe in having children,” he said while warning Americans of the increasing Western Europe birthrates.
During the 2021 Florida Legislature session, Baxley sponsored Senate Bill 86 which required students to pursue a degree from an approved list of degrees that lead to jobs. Opponents argued that the bill would remove choice in degrees for lower income students and push the highest performers away from Florida colleges and Florida universities. The bill died in the House.
Before his election to the Florida Legislature, Baxley was executive director of the Christian Coalition of Florida, a non-profit group that was “founded with the purpose of serving as a voice for the pro-family citizens of Florida to ensure that our religious liberties are protected from government intrusion.”
The coalition noted on its website that the 2023 Florida legislative session “will go down as one of the most consequential sessions in our state’s history for values voters.”
“Faith, family and freedom racked up amazing wins as lawmakers approved legislation to advance the right to life, protect children from the LGBT indoctrination and genital mutilation agenda, and make strides in upholding the conscience rights and religious liberties of people of faith in the medical and teaching professions,” the coalition said.
Baxley subscribed to and pushed the racist and xenophobic conspiracy theory in 2008 that then-candidate Barack Obama was Muslim and could not be trusted as president.
The Advocate reported that in a 2013 panel discussion, Baxley equated the children of alcoholics, drug addicts, and other abusers with the children of lesbian parents.
“It’s easy to say parents need to get involved, but half these kids are raising themselves,” Baxley said, “they don’t have any parents that are functional. How can we address that?”
In 2015, Baxley supported a measure in the Florida House of Representatives that would have allowed private adoption agencies to refuse to place children with LGBTQ+ parents.
“I don’t hate anybody,” Baxley said. “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody. I’m not phobic, but I simply can’t affirm homosexuality. My compass won’t go there, knowing what I know biblically.”
In 2020, Baxley sponsored a bill to make it a second-degree felony for health care providers to provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“No parent should be allowed to sterilize, castrate or permanently disfigure a child,” Baxley wrote on Facebook.
Baxley supported gay conversion therapy, a widely debunked practice that seeks to change a person’s sexuality or gender identity. The practice ranges from “praying the gay away” to electroshock therapy. Many states, cities, and counties have passed laws banning its use on minors.
Other states are challenging Florida and Texas for the title of most homophobic. Some states have taken to punishing lawmakers who were pro-LGTBTQ and who fought legislation to limit transgender rights.
Protesters in Oklahoma in February opposed legislation to ban gender-affirming care, including puberty-blocking treatments for gender dysphoric youth and hormone treatments for adults who transitioned years ago. One angered, transgender activist, Devyn Mitchell, allegedly threw water on a Republican lawmaker. Mitchell’s partner, Ari Ross, intervened and then hid in the office of state Rep. Mauree Turner, a Black nonbinary Democrat who led opposition to the legislation. A week later, Republicans voted to censure Turner.
In Montana, Democratic state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who is transgender, argued against legislation banning gender-affirming care for children and said, “I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.” Republicans said she violated the rules of decorum and barred her from the house floor.
Montana House Majority Leader Republican Sue Vinton said in a floor speech that Zephyr needed to be disciplined because she had “encouraged the continuation of the disruption of this body, placing legislators, staff and even our pages at risk of harm.”
In Nebraska, Democratic state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh was threatened with censure after saying that three bills to restrict transgender rights were meant to “legislate hate” and would lead to the “genocide” of transgender people. Legislative leaders have so far declined to bring a vote for censure.
Baxley, Garcia and Holcom are the latest in a long line of people who have acted out their hatred of the LGBTQ community. In December 2020, Out.com reported on some of the more notorious homophobes over the years, including:
Ed Davis was the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Davis once compared gay people to lepers and opposed the city’s first pride parade in 1970, saying, “As far as I’m concerned, granting a parade permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to march to a group of thieves and murderers.”
Robert Mugabe, then Zimbabwe’s aging dictator, said in 1995 that gays are “worse than pigs and dogs.” He’s called gays insane and unnatural, and homosexuality is still outlawed in Zimbabwe.
Ronald Reagan called gay people “sick unfortunates” and stalled repeal of anti-sodomy laws in the state in the early ’70s. During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, LGBTQ groups named Reagan 1985’s Homophobe of the Year and the then-president didn’t give a formal speech about the epidemic until 1987 after thousands had died.
Phyllis Schlafly formed the “Stop ERA” group that successfully blocked ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Schlafly waved the specter of same-sex marriage and other rights for gays and lesbians as a scare tactic to kill the proposed amendment. She used her “pro-family” Eagle Forum to fight the expansion of LGBT rights, which she said would mean that “perverts will be given the same legal rights as husbands and wives.”
The Rev. David Renfroe directed Anita Bryant’s counseling center. Bryant was an anti-gay crusader who campaigned to repeal an anti-discrimination ordinance in Miami-Dade County in 1977. In 1979, Renfroe said that thousands of homosexuals had come to him and Bryant for help. “You are not even a homosexual,” he said he told those who allegedly sought his help. “There is no such thing. You are merely practicing homosexuality. God created only two sexes. When you call yourself a homosexual, you are saying God created a third sex. There is no such thing.”
David Bahati was a member of the Ugandan parliament when he wrote the country’s “kill the gays” bill. The bill was toned down to a “jail the gays” bill, which passed but was later invalidated.
Failed third-party presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche and his followers put a measure on the ballot in California in 1986 that could have led to a quarantine of people with HIV. Among their slogans was “Spread Panic, Not AIDS.”
TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggert served on the board of the American Coalition for Traditional Values, which called on politicians to pledge never to accept campaign contributions from gay people. Swaggart once said on air, “I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I’m going to kill him and tell God he died.”
Paul Cameron, founder of the Family Research Institute claimed that many gay men eat feces and that Americans are much more likely to be murdered by a gay person than a straight one.
The Rev. James Dobson founded Focus on the Family in 1977 and then, in 1998, formed “Love Won Out,” a group that claims it can “cure” homosexuality.
The late Rep. William Dannemeyer, R-Calif., said in 1992 that he would like to eliminate all HIV-positive people. He also signed a pledge from the American Coalition for Traditional Values to never take campaign donations from gay people.
The late Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kans., claimed that “God hates fags” as he protested funerals of gay people, including Matthew Shepard and Iraq war casualties.
The late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent in the case that struck down anti-sodomy laws, and claimed that that the court had bowed to the “homosexual agenda.”
In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin banned foreigners from adopting a Russian child if they came from a country supportive of marriage equality. Putin also signed the so-called gay propaganda ban, which said positive representations of being LGBT were a danger to children.