Anyone like me who grew up in Colorado Springs as a young LGBT person in the last 20 years knows it is not an easy place to be openly LGBT. Despite the the city’s population being less than 500k, it has FIVE military bases, including the sprawling Air Force Academy campus. It is also headquarters for more than FIVE HUNDRED conservative christian orgs (as of 2021), including one of the most heinously anti-LGBT groups—“Focus on the Family,”—the organization whose literature encouraged my parents to send me to conversion therapy as an LGBT teen.

This article does a nice job of capturing the completely awful “hearing”yesterday. I also want to add a few things now that I’ve had some time to reflect. wuwf.org/florida-news/2… First, people providing comments were called out of order from when they signed up with a clear preference for supporters of the proposed rule. We didn’t hear from anyone opposing the rule until 30 MINUTES into the hearing, despite signing up an hour before hearing started at 2pm

The public hearing for Florida’s proposed rule banning coverage of gender affirming medical care is starting in 30 minutes and it is PACKED with our opponents, many of whom are handing out us flags. This is going to be interesting/potentially scary.

https://twitter.com/carl_s_charles/status/1542962741853536257

Many of the people sitting around me are holding a “AHCA Medicaid Talking Points” paper and wearing shirts that say “Moms For Liberty” and wearing stickers that say “Let Kids Be Kids.”

I was just told that comments are going to be limited to 2 minutes.