DeSantis: Honoring Pulse Nightclub Victims Just Too 'Political'
Because people might be on the side of the shooter.
On June 12, 2016, a man named Omar Mateen walked into Pulse, a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, and opened fire. He killed 49 people and injured 53 — which, at that time, was the deadliest mass shooting in United States history. It’s still the second, after the Las Vegas mass shooting that happened the year after. America!
On Thursday morning, Orlando residents woke to find that a memorial to those victims — a simple rainbow crosswalk — had been painted over by the Florida Department of Transportation. The city’s government had not requested this, had not given permission for it, and was not even notified that this was going to happen.
State Sen. Carlos G. Smith responded to the cowardly act of vandalism, calling it
a “hostile act against the city of Orlando” and an insult to “the families and survivors of this horrific tragedy.”
Which is exactly what it was.
Smith and some other citizens also chose to respond by putting the rainbow back in the crosswalk, so that people can be reminded that there are still non-shitty people out there.
“This callous action of hastily removing part of a memorial to what was at the time our nation’s largest mass shooting, without any supporting safety or discussion, is a cruel political act,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said in a post on X.
Ron DeSantis, a normal, well-adjusted human being, responded to the desecration on X, posting, “We will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes.”
”For political purposes.” Because now it’s “political” to honor the lives of the victims of a mass shooting. As far as Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, is concerned, he doesn’t want state roads taking sides … in a mass shooting. And it’s political because, I suppose, Republicans are on the side of the mass shooter?
Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman issued a statement in response:
“The rainbow crosswalk at Pulse was a tribute, not a political statement — and a tribute authorized by a Republican administration, at that. It was specifically designed to enhance pedestrian safety for people paying their respects.
“Removing that crosswalk was a mean-spirited attempt to demoralize the LGBTQ+ community and an insult to the 49 people who lost their lives there nearly a decade ago. I join Senator [Carlos G. Smith] in condemnation of this unnecessary betrayal of their memory.
”Wasting taxpayer dollars on politically charged stunts is what I’ve unfortunately come to expect from the administration that brought us the Hope Florida scandal. If they think this is what Floridians expect from their government, they’re even more out of touch than I thought.”
Naturally, because X is a vile cesspool filled with vile human beings, the responses to many of these posts were filled with people whining about how they shouldn’t ever have to see rainbows or know that gay people exist — which they still keep referring to as “shoving their sexual preferences down our throats.”
Personally, I would love to live a life where I didn’t know what hateful things these people believe, and where people who share their grotesque beliefs don’t walk into gay bars and kill 49 people. Hell, I wish that I didn’t have to know that there are people out there who are more outraged by a fucking rainbow crosswalk than they are about 49 people being killed. But I do not get such a luxury, do I? No, I do not.
These are the same people, mind you, who cry that “history is being erased” when statues of people who fought for slavery are torn down or military bases are renamed for people who weren’t Confederate traitors. The same people who want tributes to their personal religion, like the Ten Commandments, posted in public school classrooms.
This all comes on the heels of Trump administration hysteria over rainbow crosswalks and other asphalt art meant to honor victims of right-wing violence. One of the first things they did, back in March, was to paint over a Black Lives Matter mural in Washington DC, which was commissioned after police officers tear gassed a crowd of people so that Trump could go and do a photo-op holding a Bible in front of a church.
“Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an X post on July 1. “Political banners have no place on public roads. I’m reminding recipients of USDOT roadway funding that it’s limited to features advancing safety, and nothing else.”
If Republicans are so profoundly upset by memorials to people killed or injured in hate crimes, if they are so very upset by the idea of their “tax dollars” being used to honor those people, then they should probably stop inspiring the violent psychopaths who commit them.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Speaking as a gay man and historian, if these goddamned racist and bigoted snowflakes don’t shut the fuck up, my sexual orientation is going to be the least I’m going to shove down their throat and out their ass mouth hole at the other end.
It's a *city* street. It's not a state highway, or a federally funded highway. So DeSantis and Duffy can take their "IT'S POLITICAL" and shove it up their asses. Assuming there's any room up there alongside their heads.