Tampa Bay’s LGBTQ+ parents navigate worry, resilience amid changing laws and Pride
ST. PETERSBURG — Kiah Bowers and her wife, Diana, were torn. It was June 2022, and they wanted to celebrate Pride with their then-3-year-old daughter, to watch her catch rainbow beads and let out her excited toddler squeal alongside friends.
It was a chance to be with their community — other LGBTQ+ parents and their children around Tampa Bay.
But recent news clips were harrowing. They had read articles about drag queen story hours being shut down around the state, about a Naples church facing backlash after hosting an event for LGBTQ+ teens, about threats of a mass shooting at a Pride event in West Palm Beach.
St. Pete Pride Family Day was clearly marked. Would they risk it, with their little girl in tow? They opted out.
This year, they decided, they wouldn’t be deterred.
The festival, held at North Straub Park on June 10, looked as if it were pulled from a child’s dream. Rainbow balloons floated under the tree canopy. Kids’ faces were painted to look like tigers, Spiderman and pastel unicorns. They lined up to meet a drag queen with long, flowing sleeves, to smile big in photos with a performer on rainbow stilts. There was a bubble party. Colorful candy.
The Bowers felt safe, and their daughter delighted. She calls Pride the “Rainbow Parade.”
“It’s everything a 4-year-old girl could possibly want,” Bowers said.
Then, on the way back to the car, a protester with a microphone took aim.
Pointing at the Bowers, he chided: “You are pedophiles.”
At the same time, another street preacher called out to children passing by: “Disavow your parents. God will send you all to hell.”
Their daughter was scared.
“They didn’t care that these were kids,” Bowers said. “It was really nasty. It cut deep.”
Across Florida, LGBTQ+ parents like the Bowerses worry about doctor appointments and what’s for dinner, balancing work with laundry and bedtime stories — the ordinary stressors of parenting.
But on top of that, they worry for their families’ safety. They fear that their children will be punished for having queer parents in a state where lawmakers this year passed more anti-LGBTQ+ legislation than any other.
Yet many can’t shake the feeling that now, in the midst of attacks on their ability to live peacefully, they need to wear their identity openly and be proud.
“It’s not just me”
When Lexi Floyd-Nye married her wife, Tonya, in 2017, St. Petersburg felt like a refuge for LGBTQ+ couples in the South.
They met in a Gulfport bar, a short walk from the library with one of the largest LGBTQ+ book collections in the state. They’d go out along Central Avenue and see pride flags draped from local coffee shops, breweries, boutiques.
This, she thought, could be the perfect place to start their family.
But six years and two children later, Floyd-Nye said living here feels different. She and Tonya have attended Pride every year without hesitation. This year, she felt pause.
“St. Pete has always been a safe haven,” Floyd-Nye said. “This is the first time in my life that I don’t feel like that.”
Parenting as an LGBTQ+ mom, she said, has come to make her feel vulnerable. It’s not just her safety she has to worry about — it’s her children’s.
Homophobic rhetoric has surged in certain corners of the internet, where swarms of commenters deride LGBTQ+ people as “groomers” intent on indoctrinating, exploiting or even abusing children.
These baseless accusations of pedophilia have historic precedent. In the 1970s, political activist Anita Bryant led an influential charge to “Save Our Children” from gay people, particularly teachers.
Today, in statehouses across the country, lawmakers have strongly restricted teachers from instructing on topics of sexual orientation and gender identity. With the stated intent of protecting children’s innocence, these pieces of legislation — which critics dub Don’t Say Gay bills in Florida and beyond — have once again put LGBTQ+ parents on edge.
Across the bay in Tampa, Callen Jones echoed that sentiment.
Jones is a nonbinary parent of two toddlers. Their kids call them Baba.
Uneasiness creeps in when Jones takes their children to use the restroom. People stare.
“I have two little kids. What do I do if somebody makes a scene?” Jones said. “Because now it’s not just me as an adult fighting for myself.”
From social media posts denigrating queer parents to people wearing T-shirts bearing LGBTQ+-related slurs, Jones has seen firsthand an emboldened hostility. And the language used is intensifying, Jones said.
“Grooming. Harming children. Dangerous.”
It can seem, Jones said, as though it’s a badge of honor to openly discriminate.
And although Jones’ children are still very young, they worry what will happen as the girls get older. Will people bully the kids at school? Will parents exclude them from birthday parties?
Will they be safe?
“I’m tired, because all I want is to be able to provide an environment where my kids thrive and they are affirmed and they are loved,” Jones said, their voice cracking. “I’m most afraid that who I am is going to make their life harder, and there’s no way I can take that difficulty away.”
A sense of belonging
LGBTQ+ parents need allies, Jones said. Not passive, “share-a-post-on-Facebook allies,” but the kind who speak up and say something when a loved one makes a harmful remark, when they see an act of discrimination or hate in public settings.
For now, these parents are turning to one another for support and community, Jones said.
In St. Petersburg, for Floyd-Nye, Pride month brought a reinvigorated sense of belonging — a reminder that, despite her real safety concerns, she can find support in neighbors, local business owners, friends.
“I’ve gone from feeling vulnerable and exposed to feeling really humbled and supported and like we do belong,” Floyd-Nye said.
Earlier this year, her family was thinking about leaving the state.
“I feel like in this political climate, that’s what the other side wants,” she said. “And I refuse to give in to that.”
Kari Chin, who has four children with her wife, Debbie, said that just seeing the pride flag around town is a reminder to her family that, even amid all the pushback, they are at home here in St. Petersburg.
In 2015, the Chins were one of three same-sex couples to sue after Florida refused to acknowledge both parents on their child’s birth certificate.
They won.
Pride’s origins are rooted in protest, Chin emphasized. One of her children has a heart condition that makes it impossible for the family to attend this year’s festivities, but she said she’s been sharing event listings with friends who have been traveling around the state to join different Pride celebrations.
The goal: Show up, and be seen.
“It’s so important that they’re happening,” Chin said. “That my kids can see the pride flag while walking down the street and see that there’s a community that supports them.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the genders of two children due to a reporting error. Callen Jones’ toddlers are girls.
