Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ attitude takes a beating in Congress — and at home. Go, karma! | Opinion

Florida Republicans mercilessly persecuted and dehumanized the gay community last legislative season. But then, this week, love won.

And, in a big, binding way that provincial politicians can’t usurp.

Thursday, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, making same-sex marriage legal nationwide in a tepid, but still bipartisan, 258 to 169 vote.

By codifying gay marriage as the law of the land — President Biden said he will shortly sign the bill — the House protected the precious right to legally be a family from being stripped away by the conservative and politicized U.S. Supreme Court.

Inconceivably so, among the 39 Republicans who voted for the act, which also recognizes interracial marriage, there was only one member of Congress from South Florida who voted Yes: Carlos Gimenez.

His district includes all of Monroe County — where Key West is known internationally as a top gay-friendly destination — and southwest Miami-Dade.

Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents increasingly right-wing and politically hysterical Coral Gables, and Mario Diaz-Balart, whose district spans from MAGA-red Hialeah-Miami Lakes into Naples, both switched prior Yes votes — taken before the Nov. 8 midterms when they were up for reelection — to No.

Shame on them.

The LGBTQ+ community should remember how easily these House members discarded their vital interests and refused to protect the sanctity of family life.

But I suppose we can at least be thankful that neither Salazar nor Diaz-Balart broke down on the House floor in weepy homophobic oratory against gay marriage like Missouri’s Rep. Vicky Hartzler did.

“This is yet another step toward the Democrats’ goal of dismantling the traditional family, silencing voices of faith and permanently undoing our country’s God-woven foundation,” Hartzler said before the vote.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There are plenty of religious denominations that support gay marriage, just not hers. And if you believe this country was indeed “woven” by God, his beautiful creation also included gay people. It has been so since the beginning of human time.

Family-affirming vote

By securing everyone’s marriage, Democrats affirmed traditional family life for people like best-seller author Armando Correa, father of three, whose family life with his partner of 37 years is solid, beautiful and admirable.

A frequent figure in Miami, where he has a second home, he married Gonzalo Hernandez Thursday at the City Clerk’s Office in Manhattan.

“Coincidence,” Correa told me about the timing of the vote in Congress.

Good karma, I say.

“We had talked about getting married, but we always thought that this law was still very vulnerable, that another president or even the Supreme Court could eliminate it,” Correa said.

But that’s no longer likely after Biden signs the bill enshrining federal rights to same-sex marriage. Not that Republicans, no doubt, won’t still conspire against gay life in places like Florida.

Message to gay community

Salazar and Diaz-Balart’s votes sent a message to the gay community that, aligned with the attacks from Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-dominant Legislature, their families are not as valuable as heterosexual ones.

They join the pile-on, anti-gay campaign Republicans are waging from local school districts to Tallahassee to stoke and cater to the ultra-conservative, homophobic Christian right.

Most notably, Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, camouflaged as parental rights, tried to quash gay children from speaking about how they feel to teachers and classmates, and straight children from talking about their two-mom or two-dad households.

The law’s chilling effect, sold as only affecting grades K-3, has quickly spread throughout school districts and expanded.

READ MORE: Remember how Republicans said ‘don’t say gay’ law only applied to grades K-3? Big lie | Opinion

Scaredy-cat educators are banning gay books and curriculum reading that contain gay references at all levels. Gay-straight alliance clubs are being disbanded.

Some school districts are ending long-held working relationships and programs jointly held with gay organizations.

In Northeast Florida’s Duval County, the School Board voted to end its 20-year programs with the gay support organizations JASMYN, the area’s leading LGBTQ support group for young people.

For some gay children, schools are so often the only safe spaces in their lives.

But you know what they say about karma.

It bites.

Wednesday, as gay marriage was on the way to legalization, the sponsor of Florida’s hateful “don’t say gay” law was indicted by a federal grand jury on fraud charges related to COVID loans to which he allegedly helped himself.

State Rep. Joe Harding, an Ocala Republican, resigned after being accused of scheming to defraud the Small Business Administration in order to obtain $150,000 in Economic Injury Disaster Loans.

If there’s anything he should be ashamed of, it’s what he represents: intolerance and, now, allegedly, thievery.

Florida’s newly acquired, Republican-scripted anti-gay attitude took a beating in Congress — and at home.

Deservedly so.