Floridians adore their rainbows, which is great, because we get so many of them. From May through September, barely a day passes that afternoon thunderstorms don't climax with an awe-inspiring arc of Crayola colors.
But — there's always a but — this year there are hurt feelings because, in the case of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Tallahassee has chosen to leave the painting with rainbows to the Almighty.
Instead, the iconic link between St. Petersburg and Manatee County and the white-sands beach communities beyond is scheduled to be bathed in red, white, and blue lights from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Indeed, the Florida Department of Transportation has ordered up a summer of patriotism for all bridges under its authority.
FDOT’s call ends a three-year streak of bathing bridges in Roy G. Biv’s palette during the first week of June.
You know, “Pride Month.”
News of FDOT’s declaration of independence from the Alphabet Society was met with dismay in the usual circles: Progressive activists and local journalists. (Insert bit-I-repeat-myself-zinger here.) After all, it’s chic to be unconventionally outrageous on the gender-orientation front these days, a status coveted by activists and journalists alike. It might even be cutting edge, if the celebration of all that slaps back at tradition weren’t demanded by its practitioners.
Give them their due: The flamboyant flaunters of unconventionality do big business in St. Petersburg throughout June. According to Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, last year’s Pride Month festivities rung up an economic impact of more than $60.7 million, spinning off $3.5 million in tax revenue.
And it’s not like the entire Tampa Bay Area will be a rainbow-free zone. Local governments and businesses (which have their own reasons to comply) remain free — and can be counted on — to drape themselves in so many rainbows you’d guess Judy Garland was singing on a loop.
Nonetheless, those who refuse to succumb to the rainbow’s power must be punished, as we witnessed in Stephanie Hayes’ column in Tuesday’s Tampa Bay Times.
Hayes isn’t incensed, exactly. Or unamused. She’s too playful for any of that. Exasperated is more like it. You can sense her eyes rolling as she warmed to her subject.
Rapidly increasing temperatures will render a bunch of sensitive adults extra fussy, much like babies who have dropped their pacifiers but do not yet have the vocabulary to ask for help.
The thing that will really push these grown toddlers over the edge? Rainbows. Yes, rainbows. The resplendent Roy G. Biv himself will force a certain faction of unsettlingly large infants into a jumbo Pack ‘N Play reserved for sniveling wah-wah sadsie pants.
Hayes disapproves, in particular, of Manatee County Commission Chair Mike Rahn, who months ago objected to the bridge being lit up like a rainbow, as well as the color scheme for National Gun Violence Awareness Day. (I looked it up for you: It’s orange.)
Imagine making part of your platform … tamping down gun violence awareness.
Now who’s being disingenuous? At the risk of drifting off track, NGVAD isn’t simply a noble effort to limit depravity with firearms; it’s about pushing gun control measures designed to curb the Second Amendment rights of Law-Abiding Americans™.
Now. Where were we? Ah. Rainbow awareness, and the usual suspects’ disgust with those who decline to submit.
Is it so hard to figure out why this year might be different? Why those who have been sympathetic to the plight of certain folks who endure, as Hayes puts it, “the ongoing struggle for rights in commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising.”
In 2024, however, the LGBTQ+ community is awash in rights — privileges, actually — never anticipated, or, frankly, even sought back in the quaint days when the gang stopped at LGB. Juciciously, it seems now.
Now, however, we are expected to bow at the throne of gender dysphoria and accept/celebrate — especially — confused males with their dangly parts intact invading girls’ and women’s private spaces, activities, competitions and so on.
Moreover, we are not so much as to lift an eyebrow at the administering of “gender-affirming” pharmaceuticals and surgeries to adolescents.
Pride Month isn’t what it used to be (if it ever was). Equal-rights seekers who aggressively champion Lia Thomas and Sadie Schreiner and Lexi Rodgers and Dylan Mulvaney and so on — we’re looking at you, Joe Biden, reinventer of Title IX — while bullying truth-speaker Riley Gaines, have sullied whatever righteousness was due the rainbow coalition.
So, no, Florida bridges won’t be lighting up all indigo and chartreuse and cornflower and tangerine this year. Because the activists behind Pride Month seem no longer about the struggle for civil rights, but, rather, the imposition of all that is dark and sinister.
