The city of St. Petersburg, Florida, decided to convert all of its public bathrooms that are single-person use or for families to “all-gender” bathrooms so that transgender people “feel safe.”
The city also seemingly wished to keep a high score on a progressive municipality equality index. St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch signed an executive policy on September 1, 2023 to change all single-occupancy and family restrooms to “all-gender,” SCNR reported. Bathrooms with multiple stalls will still remain gendered.
The policy, which has a six-month grace period, effects large venues like Al Lang Stadium, which seats 7,500, and Tropicana Field, which seats over 25,000 and is home to Major League Baseball team the Tampa Bay Rays.
The change is reportedly a reaction to a state law that went into effect on July 1, 2023, which made it illegal for a person to enter (and not leave) a bathroom designated for the opposite sex.
“We’re eliminating gender identity restrictions and making them all gender so trans individuals feel safe using individual facilities,” St. Petersburg’s LGBTQ+ liaison, Jim Nixon, told the Tampa Bay Times.
“We just felt like this was a good opportunity to make that change since we had made it here in City Hall,” Nixon continued. “It was just an opportunity that we had seen this becoming a bigger issue.”
The city also seemed to be operating in response to the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Municipal Equality Index. The index grades cities on “how inclusive municipal laws, policies, and services are of LGBTQ+ people who live and work there.”
The Human Rights Campaign is a progressive activist group focused on the LGBT agenda and often backs pro-child sex-change projects.
St. Petersburg reportedly received a perfect score for the tenth straight year on the index. The city is considered a success story by the activist group, with St. Petersburg enacting “intentional inclusivity” at the heart of the city.
“It [lets our] transgender siblings … know there are facilities available that they’re safer to use,” the city’s sexual orientation official went on. Nixon then described state legislation as attacks and reiterated that the city’s decision was one of safety.
