Come Out With Pride parade in downtown Orlando Credit: Matt Keller Lehman

Orlando’s annual Come Out With Pride festival this weekend is expected to draw thousands of attendees to celebrate LGBTQ+ identities and queer liberation.

But a new law (SB 1134) passed by the Florida Legislature this year could shape what Pride festivities look like in the years to come, at least as far as it concerns the city of Orlando’s involvement. Although it’s yet to take effect, event organizers say they’re already seeing a chilling effect.

“We’ve seen a drop in parade participation, and we’ve seen a drop definitely of those folks who are elected officials or even candidates,” said Tatiana Quiroga, executive director of Come Out With Pride Orlando.

The law, effective Jan. 1, 2027, forbids local governments from funding or promoting any diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including “activities designed or implemented with reference to race, color, sex, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.”

Although the law doesn’t ban Pride festivals in Florida outright — or forbid cities from issuing permits for them — it could limit the ability of local government officials, like Orlando’s mayor, to publicly support them or even attend them in their official capacity.

“You can attend these events, but you can’t denote that you’re an elected official,” Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, told the hosts of a WMNF 88.5-FM Tampa radio program earlier this year. Eskamani, an Orlando native, herself is currently campaigning to become Orlando’s next mayor.

“I mean, it’s just so silly and impossible, right?” she asked. “It’s as if, you know, I walk into Pride, and if someone calls me Mayor, I have to duck and hide,” she joked. “I mean, that’s how absurd and obscene the legislation really is.”

“It’s as if, you know, I walk into Pride, and if someone calls me Mayor, I have to duck and hide.”
Orlando mayoral candidate and State Rep. Anna Eskamani

It also comes with consequences for those who refuse to follow it. Elected officials who violate the law could be subject to a charge of malfeasance, according to a bill summary, which could make them vulnerable to suspension from office.

“We can see that it really is designed to have a chilling effect, so that local governments will just self-censor rather than test the bounds of the uncertainty in the law,” said Equality Florida policy director Jon Harris Maurer.

Local governments, he confirmed, are already grappling with how to navigate the law’s restrictions, which could extend beyond LGBTQ+ Pride festivities to other arts and cultural events that highlight specific racial or ethnic identities.

“It’s critically important that citizens continue to reach out to their local officials and remind them how important it is to continue showing up for these communities in every way that the law allows it,” he said.

As queer Floridians continue to navigate hostile attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and the transgender community, specifically, Quiroga told Orlando Weekly, it’s hard not to see the current political landscape as a step back for the community after years of progress.

“We’re almost going back to our roots, to be fully honest with you,” she said.

Going back to our roots

Come Out With Pride Orlando dates back more than 20 years to 2005, when Orlando was increasingly being eyed as an up-and-coming progressive city.

Just a few years before, in 2002, gay advocates convinced Orlando city leaders to add sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination ordinance — a push motivated in part by Orlando police officers’ discriminatory treatment of gay people.

The Orange County Regional History Center a few years later, in 2006, welcomed an exhibit highlighting Orlando’s gay history, coinciding with that year’s Come Out With Pride event.

Advocates reportedly scrambled at the time to organize an engaging visualization, according to former Orlando Weekly contributor Billy Manes, gathering old ads for the now-shuttered gay club Parliament House, creating a “Wall of Courage” highlighting deceased LGBTQ+ activists, and visualizing the emergence of lesbian social gatherings known as “Moon Parties,” organized with a political angle.

“People are desperate for this to happen,” then-Come Out With Pride committee chair Ken Kazmerski told the Weekly. By that time, Orlando reportedly ranked in the top 10 metros nationwide with the biggest LGBTQ population, with nearly 6 percent of locals identifying as gay or bisexual.

Today, Orlando is decidedly one of Florida’s most progressive (and gayest) cities. We still have our first openly gay city commissioner, Patty Sheehan, sitting on Orlando City Council.

And rainbow pride flags are displayed across the city year-round — posted up at businesses or proudly displayed by the city’s Main Street Districts — in a show of welcoming, love and appreciation of Orlando’s LGBTQ community, as well as remembrance for the 2016 mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse that killed 49.

Come Out With Pride Orlando, today a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that organizes the city’s annual Pride parade, no longer operates on the shoestring infrastructure it began with.

This year, and for several years at this point, the festival has boasted high-profile corporate sponsors ranging from Amazon to Bank of America, Sysco, Universal Orlando and Walt Disney World.

But Come Out With Pride, specifically — unlike the earlier LGBT+ liberation movement that predated it — has always had strong ties to the business community, according to Quiroga, who’s served on the board of the nonprofit since 2020.

The annual festival, as it occurs today, emerged from LGBTQ+ business owners organized with the local Pride Chamber of Commerce, who were seeking greater visibility and representation in the region’s economic footprint.

“There’s been a very long history of Come Out With Pride being very connected to the business, entrepreneurs, and the economic impact that we have in Central Florida,” Quiroga explained.

This is, admittedly, a little more than a stone’s throw — or should we say brick? — from the roots of the more militant, anti-capitalist iteration of the gay rights movement that emerged in the late 1960s and ’70s following the Stonewall riots in New York City.

Before Come Out With Pride, some of Orlando’s earliest gay pride parades were organized by Orlando Regional Pride in the early 1990s, attended mostly by locals.

Where a Pride parade in 1994 drew about 3,500 people, according to the Florida LGBT Museum, Come Out With Pride these days draws more than 200,000 locals and visitors from across the southeast region annually.

“Our event is the largest single-day [Pride] event in Central Florida, and so to me that just speaks volumes of who we are as a community,” Quiroga stated.

Her own connection to Come Out With Pride is also very personal. She and her wife have lived in Central Florida for more than 30 years and have two children together, both teenagers.

“Attending Pride has always been one of our family traditions,” she said. “It’s really become like any other holiday for us, and so it’s been really interesting to watch the kids experience Pride every year a little bit differently.”

A fragile relationship

The city’s relationship with festival organizers has also changed over the years, even since Quiroga first officially got involved in 2020. During the COVID pandemic, festivities were temporarily halted, but by 2021 and 2022, she felt the city was very supportive.

“I really felt like, at that point, we had a very strong relationship,” she recalled. “And through the years, now that we’re seeing this sudden climate change, it has definitely dampened.”

Under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was first elected in 2018, state lawmakers have passed laws targeting bathroom use by transgender people, gender-affirming medical care, and the regulation of pronoun use.

The state has also implemented state censorship measures in schools — preempting local control — to silence discussion of LGBTQ+ identities and DEI.

“This year, I was notified that the city will not be putting up any of the rainbow banners,” Quiroga admitted, referring to banners she said are typically hung across the city’s downtown core. “It does feel like every year it’s been a little less.”

A city spokesperson told Orlando Weekly she couldn’t immediately confirm Quiroga’s account regarding the banners herself, but reaffirmed the city’s support for the event.

“For more than two decades, Orlando has proudly welcomed the Come Out With Pride parade, continuing to showcase the city of Orlando as a place that welcomes all and celebrates everyone who makes this community strong,” city spokesperson Ashley Papagni said in a statement.

She confirmed the new law will not affect the city’s support for this year’s event, nor will it prevent Come Out With Pride from holding its parade in Orlando moving forward.

“Organizers will continue to work with the city to secure the necessary permits and coordinate resources for a successful event for the community,” she said.

But direct funding from the city for the event may not materialize as in years past. The city’s Downtown Development Board awarded a $20,000 special events grant this year to Come Out With Pride. In exchange, the city is given sponsorship, which comes with placement in the parade and marketplace.

“I’m already anticipating that we will not be receiving that next year,” Quiroga predicted.

She may be right.

Moving forward, Papagni said the Downtown Development Board has decided to temporarily pause its special event grants program entirely — a move that affects all applicants for the city grant program, not just Come Out With Pride.

Acts of resistance

Orlando’s Come Out With Pride festivities, at the very least, aren’t dependent on the city’s financial support. But Quiroga worries its lower profile in the coming years — perhaps beginning with the missing rainbow banners — could send a harrowing message.

“We’re going to keep marching on regardless … but now you’re making a clear message to the residents of Central Florida that our flag is too politicized to put up, when at the end of the day, [we] as human beings shouldn’t be politicized,” she said.

Maurer, with Equality Florida, pointed out that other Florida cities — Tallahassee and Miami Beach — have already dedicated funding in their 2027 budgets for LGBTQ+ Pride events and programming next year, ahead of the law’s Jan. 1 effective date. The city of Key West also dedicated $25,000 in funding for a LGBTQ+ art installation.

“Our local governments are trying to get out ahead of the uncertainty and the restrictions of the law,” he said.

“We are always going to be here as an organization, regardless of what the waves and the storm are going to look like,” said Quiroga. “But the spirit of Pride is to celebrate who we are, to come together as a community, and to also stand up for our representation and visibility. So we’re going to always make sure that we do that.”

This article appears in Oct. 14-20, 2026.

Join us at Lake Eola Park for Orlando Beer Fest on 11/14. Limited tickets available, buy yours today!