“History never repeats itself,” wrote historian Emilia Viotti da Costa. But 1980s Florida may sound familiar to queer Floridians in 2025: a conservative resurgence, a global economy fraught with trade wars and a government devising attack after attack on minorities.
Against this backdrop, the Florida legislature convened in 1981. Among its members was Democratic State Senator Alan Trask, a self-described born-again Christian. A few years prior, Trask had sponsored legislation barring marriage except between a man and a woman, according to lawyer and historian Allan H. Terl.
The legislation also banned any homosexual person from adopting a child in the state of Florida.
Eager to outdo even himself, Trask in the 1981 session introduced an amendment to outright defund Florida universities and colleges hosting “any group or organization that recommends or advocates sexual relations between persons not married to each other.”
With the wind fully at the sails of the Christian right, few Florida legislators were brave enough to speak up in opposition. On June 30, 1981, Gov. Bob Graham signed the state budget bill into law.
But in February 1982, the Supreme Court of Florida struck down the law as a violation of both the Florida and U.S. Constitutions. In the unanimous opinion, Justice Joseph Arthur Boyd Jr. wrote freedom from government censorship is so fundamental because “ours is a nation rich in diversity.”
If a judge born in 1917 can understand this, why can’t Gov. Ron DeSantis?
In 2022, DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, prohibiting classroom discussion on gender or sexual identity in K-3 public education. In 2023, the “Don’t Say They” law expanded it to include K-12 public education, and prohibited the use of preferred pronouns over assigned ones. In 2025, they cover our street memorials in black paint.
Each time, the goal was identical: remove the queers. Remove our organizations, remove our history from the narrative, remove any physical space which attests to our presence in the population.
We had the curriculum wars, now we have the crosswalk wars. Florida politicians at every level once again show their eagerness to target queer Floridians. We can read between the painted-over lines: Reactionary conservatives intend to take more from us than just rainbow crosswalks. Our lives and rights are in the crosshairs.
It may seem DeSantis is a mastermind of making monsters out of Florida’s queer population — but he’s not. The DeSantis playbook for ginning up fears about queer Floridians has been handed down from reactionary politician to reactionary politician going back to mid-twentieth century Florida.
Queer Floridians of 2025, make note: In each of these past instances, as in 1982, the reactionaries failed. They formed committees, they passed legislation, they won elections. Insurmountable they seemed, yet down they all came.
Trask resigned in disgrace just six months after the Florida Supreme Court ruling. Bush lost his 1982 re-election campaign. Though “history never repeats itself,” the events of Florida’s past reveal to its queer readers a critical fact: We are unremovable.
The present is special, and our moment a crisis. Of that, da Costa wrote, “Crises are moments of truth.”
Let this moment expose reactionary rhetoric for its inherent cruelty, let it reveal the bonds between us as queer people, and let it inspire us to embrace our inner truths — unremovable.
Liam Taylor King is a 22-year-old law student at the UF Levin College of Law.
