Gay Days begins annual festival in Orlando as parks celebrate Pride Month

I saw a few posts yesterday in former employee Facebook groups about SFOT hosting drag queen performances on Friday and Saturday nights in June as part of their pride month events:

https://www.sixflags.com/ov...elebration

There was a lot of discussion of boycotts, some pearl clutching, and plenty of "what about the children?" Seriously, it's in an indoor theater and it's 18 and over. Give me a break. Dallas-Fort Worth has been party to plenty of drag show related protests, including some with goofballs walking the sidewalks with long rifles to "protect" people, so it will be interesting to see if this draws any dismay from that crowd.

Protecting the children is so laughable. Last week we went through active shooter training with our local police department and EMTs. The first hour of that training was how to set up your classroom so you can quickly get out of the line and sight of a shooter, barricade the doors, and how to fight back in the event the shooter gains access to your room. This included gross motor movements to break the shooters arm and potentially shredding ligaments and tendons with scissors. This was followed by a slow speed and full speed simulation of an active shooter scenario with the police and rescue teams. I will fight like hell to protect my students even if that means I can't go home to my kids.

Some ass with a gun protesting a drag show isn't protecting anyone. They are just demonstrating that they are a homophobe.

Or they are part of the militia

All of the "protecting children" stuff annoys me. When a trans drag queen teaching history kills a kid with a book, get back to me.

The Young Turks recently posted commentary and a reaction to a video taken at what I assumed was the Crayola store, which looks like an an enormous, fun place with way too many crayons. An employee was busy with crayons and here comes Kevin with a question.
“Yeah, do you support woke?” (Whatever the hell that means…)
The employee kind of squints at the guy and says “I’m sorry, what?”
“Do you support LGBT here?”
And with an amazing amount of control the employee says “Sir, we’re a family friendly attraction and we’re inclusive to everyone. It’s good for all ages and all people.”
“All ages?”
“Yup”
“Oh, ok. Well I’m gonna look around and make sure there’s nothing gay going on here.”
It’s a good thing I wasn’t working there because I would’ve slapped him upside the head with every bit of gay I’ve got going on here, lol.
I don’t know where this happened, but there is a store in Florida so that tracks. What, did he see a bunch of Crayons at a family attraction and suddenly taste the rainbow or something? The audacity is appalling.

Shades:

Or they are part of the militia

Probably not a great idea to advertise that since all 50 states have laws against private militias. People that show up to protests with a gun are doing so to intimidate.

Jeff:

I'll never understand people who loathe others experiencing joy and celebration.

But people that aren't like everyone else are scary, right?

Hanging n' Banging:

I just want to be able to go into any place of business, theme parks included and not be peppered with every sort of celebration or social movement that is being practically shoved down my throat.

How do you ever leave your house in these United States?

I have some advice for you.

Definitely remember when Disney tolerated it rather than promote it and glad that's changed. Remember for gay day (I think it was just 1 day) in the 90s, all the queer folks and allies would wear a single color to identify themselves, think it was a red shirt. Not sure if this is true, but heard back then they had someone scanning the crowd at admissions and offering up wardrobe alternatives to some random dad with a family that was wearing a red shirt.

This year is particularly important and a bit more scary because the homophobes have adapted the "stay away from our kids!" thing and I'm trying to train myself to avoid the comments of any corporate Pride post. Ripley's is doing an event called The Aqueerium again this month here. It's a night time, 19 and older, ticketed event with dancing and drag. They're getting slammed by the "Stop the indoctrination" or "just let the kids be kids, leave them alone" and boycott calls. That obviously makes no sense because it's an adult event, but any opportunity to be hateful seems to be a good one for these people.

Our local Pride organizers had to put a cry out for extra funding because security and insurance costs were like 4x over last year. Hung out with an old friend who manages a gay bar recently and he said there's genuinely more of a concern for violence because of this crap.

Jeff:

Went to Epcot for lunch (as one does). There are photo ops as well.

That seems like an expensive lunch.

that seems like it would be a extra loooong lunch break too. 😆

good pic!

Funny you should mention that. They just started doing 20% off for passholders at the non-concessionaire festival food stands. Had a chicken skewer in Morocco for $5, and potato pancakes in Germany for $4. A Chipotle burrito would have cost me $9, so it's no more expensive than anything else. Also, we can typically get in and out in 75 minutes without rushing. If I don't have meetings after, I rush even less. But I hit my step count either way!

I'm glad people are still going to WDW to celebrate Pride; I imagine the energy this year will rival Pride celebrations in 2015 when marriage equality was upheld.

Personally, I decided to go to Pride Night at Disneyland this year, as it's the first officially sponsored LGBTQ+ Disney Park event in the US. It's also cheaper (good flights from Chicago and hotels at half the cost), MUCH more laid back, and requires fewer vacation days to experience everything I want to see. And while I cheer on and support the right thinking folks in Florida who are fighting the good fight, I'd really prefer not to support the current regime by paying all the tourist taxes the state levies on visitors. Sure, California is no tax haven, but at least the taxes there go toward typical government boondoggles, not active violence against me and my community.

I feel like Disneyland is a well guarded secret in the Chicagoland area. I have friends that do Disney every year that have never been to DLR. Then they complain about the lines, the cost, and the heat in Florida. These same friends also love Southwest. So there's that.

Most of the property tax revenue in Orange/Osceola counties stays here, in the place that employs hundreds of thousands of service industry workers, and people are generally supportive of that industry. It's not the state. Y'all are paying for our schools, roads and services. But even with sales tax, as one of the three biggest metros, a ton of that is coming right back to us.

So remember, just because the governor is an asshole, there are literally millions of people who do not share his assholery.

Having never lived in FL, I'm not versed at all about how taxes there work. However, a quick google search tells me 6% of every dollar I spend goes to the state in sales tax, more for hotels and transportation. Counties and cities levy their own taxes on top of that, I assume. So on a trip where I spend $2500 on hotels, food, merch, tickets, taxis/ubers, etc., at least $150 goes into the state's coffers. While that money may go towards roads and such, that frees up other money to be used for the stupid **** we're talking about, right? If I could exempt myself from the state levied taxes, I'd be very happy to support the people and businesses there.

Well, sometimes, but not in summer. I moved to Chicago from Alabama for many reasons, and a major one of those was to escape the heat, heh.

The six percent from the purchase total isn't from the dollar, it's in addition to. And again, the taxes aren't there to benefit the elected people, they benefit the people living in the state, of which a minority are homophobes. The money for the product is mostly what you spend on, which counts toward the product and the people who "make" it.

Any tourist centered area is going to price gouge visitors with taxes. This isn’t exclusive to Florida.

That's not price gouging.

Exporting tax burdens is often a goal of state/local governments. Tourism is common way to do that. Works better for some areas than for others. Now we are seeing increased efforts of Red/Blue State Tourism Commissions. Hearing from parents with kids in K-12 that similar appeals are being made with school boards/districts.

FWIW, Omaha has the highest hotel tax rate in the country at over 20%. Orlando's rate comes in at #117 at 12.5%, but it's near the top in total revenues. (Omaha does not even make that list. Seems like their effort to gouge all those Warren Buffett fanboys might be backfiring. Alternative explanation: It's Omaha.)

Source - the list of rates is too big to post here but can be found about halfway down the page.

Lodging Tax Revenues in 25 U.S. Markets

(Obviously, 2020 and 2021 are not really representative.)

Sales tax generally isn't used for roadway projects. Gas tax proceeds are used for roadways. Sales tax is divided up based on population and that revenue goes into a city's general fund.