Tag: Florida

A Florida pastor has been arrested after he allegedly wrote a homophobic slur on his waiter’s receipt and then stuffed it down the restaurant manager’s blouse after she confronted him outside over the homophobic comment, police say. Frederic Sterry Smith, 62, of St. Augustine, Florida, was charged with simple battery following the incident at the Milagro On 12 Latin Kitchen restaurant on July 27. Smith was out dining with a female companion when he allegedly wrote “if he wasn’t gay,” and...

South Florida Sun-Sentinel readers got quite an eyeful early Sunday morning when the paper tweeted out an article about a 100-year-old house that included a photo of a speedo-clad hunk. The photo of the shirtless model was mistakenly included in a tweet promoting an article, titled: “How a nearly 100-year-old house will be saved by moving it across town,” which also included a link to the wrong article. In response to the mistake, the Sun-Sentinel tweeted: “Well, clearly this wasn’t how...

A city council candidate in Florida has been posting homophobic messages on social media. Chico Cromartie is running in the primary to challenge St. Petersburg, Florida, City Council candidate Lisa Wheeler-Bowman in a non-partisan race. In Facebook posts that appear to have been deleted, Cromartie wrote about his hatred of gay people. “STOP PROMOTING HOMOSEXUALITY TO OUR CHILDREN,” one June post read, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “I hear you south St. Pete! Finally we have a leader who’s not afraid to...

Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church just got banned from his 33rd country: Australia. In a video posted to YouTube, Anderson said that he was going to speak at the New Life Baptist Church in Australia with Pastor Kevin Sepulveda. “But I just got word back today that, basically, I’m banned from Australia,” he said. His Electronic Travel Authority “was denied by Australia. I’m not going to be permitted to enter the country.” Anderson got worldwide attention several years ago...

PALM HARBOR, Fla. (Reuters) - An immigrant to the United States, Suzanne Vale took no offense at Republican President Donald Trump’s tweet this week telling Democratic congresswomen they are free to “go back” to their ancestral homes if America is not to their liking. She disagrees with critics who accuse Trump of race-baiting with his attacks on the four women of color. “I don’t care what you are - what religion, where you come from,” said Vale, 61, a...

Screenshot via Florida Politics Now for your daily dose of disappointing, we have someone who lied about helping Pulse victims after the shooting. Elizabeth McCarthy is currently in hot water. According to recently released documents by the Florida Department of Health, the former Democratic state House candidate confessed to a state investigator that she lied about being a medical doctor and treating Pulse victims. As such, she is now being charged of violating state law under the state’s unlicensed activity statues. The...

A Trump administration lawyer who is in charge of a civil rights division had multiple run-ins with the law for his aggressive protests for Christian conservative causes and harassment of women. Matt Bowman is a Christian conservative extremist, and he also happens to be one of the top lawyers in Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights. Mother Jones reports that he was arrested multiple times from 1996 to 2002 for harassing women while protesting hospitals where he...

Elizabeth McCarthy (image via Elizabeth McCarthy’s Facebook)Yikes. While running her campaign for Florida’s House of Representatives, 50-year-old gay candidate Elizabeth McCarthy apparently lied about working as a cardiologist and helping remove “77 bullets out of 32 people” the night of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting. An investigation into her credentials by the Florida Department of Health found that contrary to her public statements, she was never a doctor, she never got her bachelor’s degree from Florida State, she wasn’t working...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta resigned on Friday amid fresh scrutiny of his handling of the sex abuse case against financier Jeffrey Epstein, becoming President Donald Trump’s latest adviser to leave the administration in controversy. Acosta, joining Trump at the White House before the president left for a trip to Wisconsin, said he did not want to be a distraction to the administration’s work because of his leadership of the Epstein case more than a decade...

Tony Lima, the executive director of South Florida’s longest-running LGBTQ organization, has been placed on paid leave after comments he made two weeks ago praising four men accused of brutally beating a gay couple for holding hands at Pride in Miami last year. Lima said that the four men, who were in the audience at the group’s June 14, 2019 Champions of Equality Gala, were “wrongly accused” after security video went viral of the four men beating Rene Chalarca and...

Four men accused of brutally beating a gay couple for holding hands at Pride in Miami last year were honored at a gala for a local LGBTQ organization. SAVE touts itself as “South Florida’s longest serving organization dedicated to protecting people who are lesbian, gay, bisexuals, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) against discrimination.” But at their Champions of Equality Gala two weeks ago, SAVE honored four men known for anything but protecting LGBTQ people: Juan Carlos Lopez, Luis M. Alonso Piovet, Adonis...

A library in Jacksonville, Florida, canceled an LGBTQ youth event after it came under attack from online activists, including Elizabeth “Activist Mommy” Johnston. A hundred students had signed up for the Storybook Pride Prom at the Willowbranch Library in Jacksonville, which was supposed to happen this coming Friday. “Come dressed inspired by your favorite book character– casual, formal, or in drag – whatever makes you feel great. Be you!” the event description said. But the event drew the ire of conservative activists...

This weekend, hate pastors in Orlando, Florida are holding a three-day “Make America Straight Again” conference around the third anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting. In response, over 150 LGBTQ and allied protestors picketed the Revival Baptist Church of Orlando whose leader helped organize the conference. The actual conference is being held in an undisclosed location but is being streamed on YouTube. Truth Wins Out (TWO), a non-profit organization that fights anti- LGBT religious extremism, recorded interviews with the protestors and...

The governor of Florida has signed the death warrant for a convicted serial killer who targeted gay men. Gary Ray Bowles, 57, confessed to killing six men in Florida, Georgia, and Maryland in 1994. Prosecutors believe he targeted because they were gay. In 1994, he killed John Roberts, his first known murder victim. He is believed to have beat and strangled Roberts. He was a suspect because his fingerprints were found on the scene, and he had previous convictions for robbery...