Stonewall Museum revokes membership after Visit Florida kills LGBTQ+ marketing effort

The Stonewall National Museum dropped its membership to Visit Florida and demanded its money back after the tourism group stopped marketing LGBTQ destinations.

The Fort Lauderdale-based organization said the destination marketing organization returned the museum’s $475 annual fee. The demand for a refund happened after Visit Florida quietly took down a site dedicated to reaching LGBTQ+ travelers.

“For a small nonprofit that gets nothing in return for their money, its money we can use better than them,” said Robert Kesten, the museum’s executive director.

He said the museum for years maintained a membership with Visit Florida, which included it in listings of gay-friendly destinations in the Sunshine State. He figures that a little bit of promotion attracted at least some visitors to the museum through the years.

But without any marketing by Visit Florida of gay-friendly or inclusive destinations, membership means only a listing on the state website along with every other member museum in Florida.

Even before the listing, it seemed clear to Kesten there was little room for the state agency to offer any special promotion of the Stonewall Museum or any other LGBTQ+ organization.

“In a little over two years that I have been here, I have applied consistently when we had conferences and the like to speak and give the perspective of the LGBTQ community as a member of the organization,” he said. “Our requests to participate have never been acknowledged.”

That’s little surprise as Visit Florida for much of the last decade has been under scrutiny by the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature in the first place. Fiscal hawks in the Legislature have questioned the need to promote tourism destinations using state dollars in the first place. As Gov. Ron DeSantis promoted a litany of anti-LGBTQ policies, encouraging gay visitors to visit the state increasingly seemed difficult.

Florida state Sen.-elect Carlos Guillermo Smith, an out Democrat, said he believes Visit Florida’s abandoning of LGBTQ+ marketing reflects the shift in policy.

“The reason Visit Florida took down their page and content welcoming LGBTQ tourists is because Ron DeSantis doesn’t believe LGBTQ individuals should be welcome in the state of Florida,” he said. “They are willing to do this to the detriment of small businesses who benefit from LGBTQ money.”

He even wonders if Florida lawmakers next year will bar local destination marketing organizations like Visit Orlando and Visit Fort Lauderdale from promoting LGBTQ destinations.

The Stonewall Museum, which is based in Fort Lauderdale, said it can use the money it spends each year with Visit Florida to instead marketing itself directly to consumers. He noted the museum will soon open a pop-up location in New Orleans.

“That $475 can go into a local LGBTQ newspaper advertisement in New Orleans promoting the museum in Fort Lauderdale. This is just one useful way we can use that money, when right now, we are not getting any bang for the buck.”