Change Has Come to Ft. Lauderdale: Out With the Homophobe, In With Jack Seiler
After six consecutive terms — more than any before him — Ft. Lauderdale’s Hummer-driving Mayor Jim Naugle is out. Despite representing a gay-friendly city, Naugle has battled with queers for much of his tenure, from denouncing gay marriage (“Marriage is a religious institution, and government should define it to be between a man and a woman”) to demanding more single-occupancy public toilets to prevent gay cruising. (Such a defender of society, Naugle once gave an interview about the problems of public gay sex from the car while his daughter was in the back seat.) Naugle earned the ire of everyone from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to the NAACP. But now, for the first time in 18 years, Ft. Lauderdale welcomes a new man to the job today. That’s Jack Seiler. And he likes us, he really likes us!
Though Ft. Lauderdale’s gay politico hopefuls lost the latest round of elections, Seiler’s takeover of the mayor’s chair represents some good.
On the agenda of Seiler (pictured above, left), a former Florida legislator, is adopting domestic partner benefits for city employees, just like he did while mayor of the smaller Wilton Manors. “Most people support some form of domestic partnership,” says Seiler. “We will look at it but we have to do it in the context of proper timing with respect to budget issues.”
As for Naugle? We won’t miss the guy.
Good for Ft. Lauderdale!!! Congratulations!
didn’t this happen a while ago? just curious…
@radg: No. The election was a little bit ago. Seiler’s first day, however, is today.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Jack+Seiler+Ft.+Lauderdale
Florida is bizarro world.
On the one hand you have people who can be very liberal, educated, sophisticated and urban. On the other you have Southern-fried KKK rednecks, Commie-hatin’ Cubans, Haitians into santaria/voodoo, drugs, and god-knows-what, and Islamic terrorists.
The last time I was in Tampa (I lived there for a time), we were driving by a large Korean Baptist Church and spray painted in big white letters on the red brick was “Koreans are fags”.
When I was younger and lived there, painting over the numerous swastikas that were spray-painted on walls in the downtown was a political act. And although I lived in a predominantly poor black neighborhood near the downtown, in the middle of that area just on the main road was the local Christian Identity (white supremacist) church.
This is Florida in a nutshell.
Congratulations to Ft. Lauderdale, but you need, and we need, someone stronger than a gay-friendly mayor. We need courageous politicians who are not afraid to speak up against religious zealots. The christianist corporation has a strong, but shallow shield. When we rise up against them, it’s not too difficult to expose their hollow underbelly.
So, good luck with your temporary victory. The christianist corporation is salivating to hire one of it’s own managers, so that they can impose their religious views, through law, into your private lives, and they make hundreds of millions of dollars doing it!
@kevin (not that one):
Guess I had better put my house up for sale and move back to New York City.
@kevin (not that one): “This is Florida in a nutshell.” So to speak…
Well, I guess this is something. Too little, too late in my opinion. Florida is a hateful, bigoted, anti-gay state and the wingnuts can have it. Even “liberal” Broward County voted for the marriage amendment last year. I am glad that I left; I don’t miss Florida at all.