How SAVE Florida Emerged From Miami-Dade’s LGBTQ Rights Battles

In South Florida, the organization now known as SAVE Florida emerged from a political history that had already made Miami-Dade County a major battleground over LGBTQ rights.

SAVE stands for Safeguarding American Values for Everyone. The Miami-based grassroots nonprofit was founded in 1993, during a period when the national political climate around LGBTQ rights was becoming more receptive to equality initiatives. Its stated purpose is to advance and defend equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in South Florida.

The group’s roots reach back to a contentious episode in Miami-Dade politics. In January 1977, the county adopted an ordinance barring discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodations. The measure quickly became the target of a campaign led by singer Anita Bryant and the organization known as the American Family Association. That effort, called “Save Our Children,” sought to overturn the county’s protections.

Voters repealed the nondiscrimination ordinance in June of that year. The same year, Florida lawmakers approved a statewide prohibition on adoption by gay men and lesbians, adding a broader legal setback for LGBTQ people and families.

Against that backdrop, LGBTQ activists and organizers began using the name SAVE in 1993 as they worked to restore and expand nondiscrimination protections. The organization’s name deliberately echoed the earlier “Save Our Children” campaign, turning a phrase associated with opposition to LGBTQ equality into an identity for an organization advocating equal treatment.

SAVE’s formation reflected a new phase in South Florida’s LGBTQ movement. Rather than treating the 1977 repeal as the endpoint of the local debate, organizers returned to the policy arena with a campaign focused on legal protections and political advocacy. The organization’s work was rooted in the idea that equality required sustained community organizing as well as public-policy engagement.

For Miami’s LGBTQ community, SAVE’s history offers a view of how local advocacy can develop in response to political defeats. The group was established in a city and county where LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections had once been enacted, removed by referendum and later became the subject of renewed organizing. That history remains central to understanding why a Miami-based organization chose a name connected to one of the most consequential anti-LGBTQ campaigns in the region’s past.

SAVE Florida’s founding story is therefore not only the story of a nonprofit’s creation. It also traces a shift from defending a single local ordinance to building a lasting South Florida organization dedicated to LGBTQ equality.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “SAVE Florida” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVE_Florida The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://books.google.com/books?id=kiKv4RN7JnUC&q=florida+homosexual+adoption+1977&pg=PA14 - https://www.google.com/search?as_eq=wikipedia&q=%22SAVE+Florida%22 - https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=%22SAVE+Florida%22+-wikipedia&tbs=ar:1 - https://www.google.com/search?&q=%22SAVE+Florida%22&tbs=bkt:s&tbm=bks - https://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&q=%22SAVE+Florida%22+-wikipedia - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22SAVE+Florida%22 Image rights Photograph description: Miami Dolphins tight end, Mike Gesicki, playing against the Atlanta Falcons in a game at Hard Rock Stadium on October 24, 2021. Image is a screen shot of Youtube video ~ 1:12 Creator: Atlanta Falcons. License: CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMike_Gesicki_Dolphins-Falcons.png. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.