This month, my husband and I watched our daughter begin kindergarten while holding our two-month-old son.
Like parents everywhere, we want our children to enter rooms where they are known, safe and encouraged.
As two dads, we also understand that belonging is not an abstract promise.
Children learn whether they belong long before they can define the word.
There's another Florida
Florida’s full story is larger than its loudest political moments.
Those of us raising families, building organizations and serving neighbors here know another Florida exists alongside the headlines.
It appears whenever people choose humanity over hostility, relationship over rhetoric and dignity over division.
In recent years, LGBTQ+ people and families have too often been discussed as political
issues rather than encountered as neighbors.
Schools and educators have been pulled into adult arguments.
Older LGBTQ+ residents have watched hard-earned progress feel less secure, while younger people have wondered whether there is a place for them in the communities they call home.
Those experiences are real.
But they are not the whole story of Sarasota, and they do not have to determine Florida’s future.
Across our region, I see businesses opening their doors, health care and aging organizations reaching people too often overlooked and neighbors choosing to share a room even when they do not agree about everything.
I see LGBTQ+ residents and allies volunteering, supporting local causes and bringing their talent into civic life.
That gives me hope – not the passive kind that waits for someone else to make things better, but the active kind that asks us to help build what comes next.
Putting hope into practice
At Project Pride SRQ, we are trying to put that hope into practice.
Through Aging Proudly, developed in partnership with Senior Friendship Centers and CAN Community Health, we are creating affirming wellness and resource conversations for older adults.
Our Diversity in Business Network brings employers and community leaders together inside local businesses and organizations to learn about one another’s work, build relationships and support broader community needs.
Our volunteers are also taking part in neighborhood cleanups and preparing to serve as an official volunteer partner for the Ruby Bridges Sarasota Initiative – because pride should move us outward, not only draw us inward.
The principle behind this work is simple: our next chapter cannot be only about asking the broader community to show up for LGBTQ+ people. It must also be about mobilizing LGBTQ+ people and allies to show up for the entire community.
We are part of Sarasota's story
We are not separate from Sarasota’s story.
We are parents and teachers, business owners and employees, artists and healthcare professionals, volunteers and retirees. When LGBTQ+ people can participate fully, our entire region benefits from that talent, generosity and leadership.
That work matters especially in our schools.
A child should not have to decode adult politics to know whether their family belongs.
Teachers should be able to focus on helping students learn and thrive.
Families – including families like mine – should be treated as ordinary and valued parts of school life.
We can hold different beliefs while protecting every child’s dignity and sense of belonging.
Sarasota can be a model
Humanity is bigger than any political side.
Dignity is not a reward for conformity.
Pride is more than a celebration; it is the confidence to live openly, contribute fully and know that we are part of the community.
Sarasota has an opportunity to model a more generous civic culture for Florida – one that lowers the temperature without lowering its values, protects dignity without dehumanizing others and turns visibility into service.
That does not require perfect agreement.
It requires a shared commitment to treating one another as human beings.
Hope must therefore become a habit.
Open a door.
Share a table.
Hire inclusively.
Ask who is missing.
Volunteer outside your usual circle.
Invest in spaces where people can meet with dignity and joy.
These choices may seem ordinary. Repeated often, they become culture.
This fall, the Gulfcoast Pride Festival – on Saturday, Oct. 24, in downtown Sarasota – will offer one visible opportunity to gather and celebrate. But it is not the finish line.
The true measure of progress will be what happens after the music ends – in our schools, workplaces, clinics, neighborhoods and everyday conversations throughout the year.
No single organization or event can create this future.
Belonging is built through ordinary decisions made repeatedly: who is invited, who is heard, who receives support and who is given the chance to lead.
As a father, I want my children to inherit a Florida defined not by its loudest arguments, but by its deepest humanity.
As the executive director of Project Pride SRQ, I believe our community can help build it – not from the margins, but alongside every neighbor who shares that hope.
Change for the better is possible.
It will not arrive fully formed from somewhere else.
It will be built by us, and it can start here.
Justyn Hunter-Ceruti is the executive director of Project Pride SRQ, a Sarasota-based nonprofit that builds partnerships, programs and community connections supporting LGBTQ+ people and the broader community. Learn more atppsrq.org.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota can be the model for the Florida we all want | Opinion
