Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis speaks with the news media during a campaign event at Versailles restaurant, Monday, Aug. 27, 2018, in Miami. At left is his wife Casey DeSantis. | Lynne Sladky/AP Photo DeSantis does about-face after omitting LGBTQ from Pulse proclamation

TALLAHASSEE — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did an about-face on Wednesday after coming under withering criticism from the LGBTQ community, issuing a revised proclamation to commemorate the anniversary of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub that left 49 dead.

The Republican initially had issued a proclamation on the eve of the anniversary of the June 12, 2016, attack on Orlando's Pulse nightclub that included no reference to the LGBTQ community or LGBTQ victims of the attack.


By mid-day Wednesday, he reversed course, issuing a “corrected” document before heading to Orlando for a visit to the Pulse memorial.

“Florida will not tolerate hatred towards the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities,” the new proclamation reads.

DeSantis, in Jacksonville for a bill signing, said he was “not involved” in drafting the first proclamation. His spokesperson, Helen Aguirre Ferré, blamed the omission on a staff error but did not provide details.

“When someone said that this wasn’t in there, I said then put it in there,” DeSantis told reporters in Jacksonville. “So we fixed it”

“Sometimes these things happen and you’ve got to correct them,” he said.

The first proclamation resembled one issued last year by then-Gov. Rick Scott, a fellow Republican. Scott's proclamation referenced "Florida's LGBTQ community," language that was removed in the initial DeSantis document.

The initial proclamation caused a firestorm across the state and on social media.

"Orlando's LGBTQ community will never be erased," state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an openly-gay Democrat from Orlando, tweeted Wednesday morning.

Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat who represents the district where Pulse is located, called the omission an intentional act.

"You have a governor who attempts to brand himself as moderate and yet he literally cut and paste a Rick Scott proclamation while intentionally removing and thus erasing the LGBTQ community," Eskamani said.

"Gay clubs are sacred to LGBTQ people and are home to equality movements," she told POLITICO.

That Pulse shooter pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack and posted on Facebook that he was motivated by the United States killing "women and children by doing us airstrikes." But the shooting nonetheless has become associated with attacks on the LGBTQ community.

Fred Guttenberg, who lost his daughter, Jaime, in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, took to Twitter to question DeSantis' motives.

"What? This was an attack on the LGBTQ community committed with a gun. Was there a reason to do this?" Guttenberg wrote , referencing DeSantis' LGBTQ omission.

As the backlash gained traction on social media early in the day, DeSantis tweeted about the Pulse anniversary, this time mentioning the gay community.

"Today we mourn the loss of life of 49 innocent victims of an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando that targeted the LGBT and Hispanic community, and Florida as a whole," DeSantis tweeted . "In honor of their memory, I am ordering flags to be lowered to half-staff."

Eskamani called the tweet "damage control."

"Advocacy matters. No doubt the Governor saw the blowback on social media for erasing LGBTQ people and is doing damage control," she said. "An apology is warranted for the original Pulse proclamation."

After campaigning in 2018 as a steadfast conservative, DeSantis since taking office has worked to brand himself as a political moderate. The proclamation, though, is not the governor’s first run-in with the LGBTQ community.

On Jan. 8, the day DeSantis was sworn into office, he issued an executive order pledging that his administration would "prohibit discrimination in employment," but excluded the LGBTQ community from the order.

"DeSantis has reaffirmed existing protections but fumbled the opportunity to take a clear stand that discrimination in any form will not be acceptable during his administration," Equality Florida said in a statement at the time.

Despite the blowback, the order was never changed. The LGBTQ community had asked Scott to pass an executive order establishing protections against discrimination, which he did not deliver.

Eskamani also noted inaction by legislative leaders, who haven't taken up legislation that would extend discrimination protections to the LGBTQ community.

Legislation advanced this year that applied to workplace protections — a more narrow version than past efforts — had bipartisan support, but failed to get a committee hearing. In the Senate, it was sponsored by Republican Party of Florida Chairman Joe Gruters, a state Senator from Sarasota, but was never part of major discussions during the 2019 legislative decision.

"Every session we fail to do anything, like how we failed to take any action after Pulse," Eskamani said.