Our community is under siege.
As our rights are stripped, our history rewritten, and our voices drowned out, the attacks keep coming. The state’s latest move — pulling HIV testing funds from The Pride Center and Compass — cuts straight to the heart of who we are.
These are not trivial cuts. At the Pride Center, positive HIV tests have already surged: 13 new cases in 2025 — doubling last year’s total. The right wing’s crusade against so-called “wokeness” and diversity initiatives is now putting lives at risk. When we defund testing, prevention, and care, we don’t just pull a service — we pull the rug out from under people’s lives.
Safe spaces don’t run on hope alone. They survive because we keep them alive — because we show up, we donate, we volunteer, we choose our own first.
We may not be able to turn the electoral tide in Florida overnight. That kind of change takes time, strategy, and massive organizing. But our community centers and LGBTQ spaces can’t wait. The need is now. The need is urgent.
Every queer center, bookstore, café, bar, business, and nonprofit is more than a place — it’s a shield. It’s where we breathe freely, where we connect, where we are safe. When one of those doors closes, it’s not just a business that’s gone. It’s one less heartbeat.
Right now, too many of our spaces are stretched thin. Community centers are fighting to pay rent. Queer-owned businesses are closing their doors. The threats outside our walls — political attacks, book bans, rising costs — are only growing louder.
We cannot wait for someone else to step in. If we want these spaces tomorrow, we must fight for them today. That means backing the organizations on the front lines. It means remembering that every dollar spent in our community is a vote for our survival.
We’ve seen this story before — cuts, closures, silence. But we’ve also seen the other story: the one where we rally, where we dig deep, where we prove that when the world turns its back, we turn toward each other.
Our centers stood for us when no one else would. Now it’s our turn. Support our own. Because if not us, who?
