Looking for Information on L.G.B.T.Q. Travel to Florida? Don’t Ask Florida.

27.08.2024 - 21:42 / nytimes.com / Ron Desantis

For years, L.G.B.T.Q. people planning a trip to Florida could turn to the official website for Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing organization, for resources on where to go, what to eat and where to stay. While there are other resources for queer travelers, the site offered information about L.G.B.T.Q.-owned businesses that visitors could patronize as well as activities “appealing to a gay community looking for a sense of belonging and acceptance,” a page on the site once read.

But sometime in the past few months, Visit Florida — a private-public, nonprofit partnership created by the Florida Legislature in 1996 — quietly took down pages with information for L.G.B.T.Q. travelers. Although no one has been able to pinpoint exactly when the pages were removed, NBC first reported on their removal on Aug. 19 and said it had happened sometime this summer. Some residents, activists and people in the local tourism industry said that erasing the pages sends the message that L.G.B.T.Q. travelers aren’t welcome in the state.

Visit Florida and the office of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

“There’s a reason these pages existed in the first place: to roll out the welcome mat and say, ‘Hey, you know what? Your family is going to be safe and comfortable here,’” Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, an advocacy group for L.G.B.T.Q. people, said in a phone interview. “So if you take away that welcome mat, the only message that you can deliver is ‘We do not want you to feel safe and welcome you.’”

Ms. Smith is one of many who feel that the removal of the pages is a continuation of the hostile policies facing L.G.B.T.Q. people in the state in recent years. It comes two years after Mr. DeSantis signed what opponents called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, limiting what teachers can say about gender and sexuality.

Like many destination marketing organizations across the country, Visit Florida receives state funding, which the governor signs off on. (Mr. DeSantis granted Visit Florida $80 million for its 2024-25 fiscal year, which the organization uses for marketing.)

“The thing that’s most interesting about this is that it was done quietly,” Ms. Smith said.

In April 2023, Ms. Smith’s organization, along with the L.G.B.T.Q.-focused Human Rights Campaign and the N.A.A.C.P., warned travelers to reconsider going to Florida because they felt that Mr. DeSantis’s policies were hostile toward L.G.B.T.Q. people, immigrants and people of color.

Colin Lienhard, a gay architect and designer who lives in Miami, said that he had felt a shift in people’s openness toward gay people, even in liberal Miami, and so he wasn’t surprised by the removal of the