FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The LGBTQ progress pride flag painted on a side street just off Fort Lauderdale beach and State Road A1A was damaged — intentionally, according to the mayor — less than three weeks after it was unveiled.
“Somebody left skid marks that were clearly deliberate — deliberate and intended to deface the LGBTQ flag,” Mayor Dean Trantalis said Monday.
“We’ll correct it. We’ll bring it back to life. But the fact that somebody thought it was necessary to express themselves that way goes to show we have a lot of work ahead of us in trying to diffuse hatred and bigotry in our community,” Trantalis said.
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department is investigating, Detective Ali Adamson, a department spokesperson, said Monday via email. The flag on Sebastian Street between State Road A1A and Seabreeze Boulevard “was vandalized in the evening hours on February 28th,” Adamson said.
Fort Lauderdale City Manager Greg Chavarria said Monday night the Police Department might announce the results of its investigation as early as Tuesday and said he had “great confidence that they will be able to get to the bottom of this.”
The flag, measuring 75 feet by 18 feet, is in the design of the progress pride flag, most of which consists of the six rainbow stripes that are a familiar symbol LGBTQ pride. It also includes triangular black and brown stripes to represent people of color and baby blue, pink and white stripes to include colors of a transgender flag.
Trantalis, the city’s first openly LGBTQ mayor, presided over the unveiling of the flag on Feb. 10, the day before the Pride of the Americas parade and festival at the beach. He said he heard about the damage Sunday morning when he was at another event in the area. He drove over, took a video of the damage and reported it to police.
‘Creeping level of hate’
The mayor said the damage to the flag should be viewed in the context of rising animosity toward traditionally marginalized, minority populations. “In a way I guess I expected it because of the creeping level of hate that’s starting to materialize in our community — not just against the gay community, but against Jews and against Blacks,” Trantalis said, something he said is fueled by political rhetoric that “gives license to those who already harbor feelings of hate.”
Trantalis said the city “will not tolerate bigotry in our city no matter what form or against whom it is being demonstrated.”
After the flag on the street was unveiled, it received some criticism on social media — “disgusting,” “this is what society unraveling looks like” — and there were multiple calls for defacing the installation.
Among the suggestions: “A nice place to have some burnout competitions,” “I live too far away otherwise I’d be vandalizing that promptly,” “Let’s see how long it lasts,” and “Do a burnout.” Several suggested people should damage it with paint. “Alright y’all, stop by the paint store. Y’all know what to do,” one said.
Last year, a Palm Beach County man who used a pickup truck to burn tire marks into a rainbow flag painted on a road in Delray Beach in 2021 was sentenced to two years of probation, 100 hours of community service and a mandatory mental health screening. Cellphone video that was posted online and went viral was used in that investigation.
Chavarria said he did not know if Fort Lauderdale Police had been able to obtain surveillance video showing what happened.
In the Fort Lauderdale case, the nature of the black marks defacing the flag show it was intentional, Trantalis said.
“You cannot create those marks by just driving over the flag,” he said. “You have to deliberately create those skidmarks, and it wasn’t done with just one vehicle. It was done with multiple vehicles. There’s multiple elements of defacement.”
City Commissioner John Herbst said Monday he “couldn’t say if it’s vandalism or not,” adding that “there’s no doubt that it can be a target for hate. I certainly would not discount that.”
Design on street
Herbst said he warned the city manager before the project began that it was inevitable that the painted flag would end up looking bad because of normal traffic.
“I was concerned that just from the normal wear and tear that the flag on the street would not hold up very well,” he said.
A Jan. 10 memo from Chavarria to city commissioners told them that after the stretch of road was resurfaced “a thermoplastic inclusive flag” would be installed that was “anticipated to have a useful life of three-five years.”
City spokeswoman Arlene Borenstein said the total project, including asphalt work, cost $77,375. After Herbst asked for details, Chavarria emailed him that installation of the permanent flag cost $32,400, of which $7,000 came from private donations.
Sebastian Street
The location is significant for the LGBTQ community.
The portion of Fort Lauderdale Beach near Sebastian Street is widely known as an LGBTQ beach. Visit Lauderdale, the public agency that promotes tourism in Broward, touts it to tourists as “the popular gay beach.”
“I understand the importance of Sebastian Street to the gay community,” Herbst said, adding that a better commemoration would explain why it’s historically significant. “It’s all well and good to have a pride flag, but if you don’t explain why that location has meaning, there’s no context to it.”
Before the work was done, he said he recommended a marker, like the one at State Road A1A and Las Olas Boulevard that identifies and explains the location of the first wade-in at Fort Lauderdale Beach. The 1961 wade-ins ultimately led to a court ruling ending segregation at beaches in Broward.
It is an important place, said Fred Fejes, a professor emeritus at Florida Atlantic University. Fejes is the author of “Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America’s Debate on Homosexuality,” which deals with the rise of Anita Bryant’s 1970s fight against gays in Miami-Dade County and the aftermath, and is working on “Queer By the Beach,” a forthcoming book about the LGBTQ community in Fort Lauderdale.
The nearby Marlin Beach Hotel, now gone, was “the center of gay life in Fort Lauderdale” in the 1970s and 1980s, Fejes said. So much so, he said, that in the 1970s then-Mayor Clay Shaw (later a longtime member of Congress) tried to have it shut down. The result of those efforts, he said created a visible and active LGBTQ community in Fort Lauderdale. “Prior it was a ‘presence’ afterwards, a ‘community,’” he said via email.
In the early 1990s, when the Marlin Beach was torn down and the site redeveloped, the new building’s shadows on the beach prompted the unofficial gay beach to migrate to Sebastian Street, Fejes said in a phone interview.
In 2007, then-Mayor Jim Naugle sparked controversy about a proposed plan for the city to buy an automated public restroom, and placing it at the Sebastian Beach parking lot.
He said the robotic toilet would be help deter what he asserted was “homosexual activity” that plagued public restrooms because of a feature that allowed occupants to stay inside for only a short time before the door would open, a featured he said would be vital for an installation at what he called “the rainbow parking lot.” He theorized it wouldn’t allow enough time for “illegal sex” between men.
Those comments, combined with his declaration at the time that he didn’t use the word “gay” because “they’re unhappy,” sparked a public campaign called “Flush Naugle.” As the controversy raged, city commissioners removed the $250,000 toilet from the budget.
What’s next
Chavarria said the city was waiting for instructions from the manufacturer about how best to restore the flag without damaging the surface. He said the city had contemplated pressure washing the surface but was told that could “debilitate” the material.
Now that the flag on the street is damaged, Herbst said he’s not sure about the best course of action. “I don’t have a good answer to that,” he said, adding that continuous repainting would be required.
Trantalis said restoration of the damaged flag is essential.
“We do not want to encourage hatred. We’ve seen swastikas painted on columns of bridges and sides of buildings and we immediately paint them over. We do not want anyone to think that hatred has a place in Fort Lauderdale.”
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