Venice, Florida’s “Family-Friendly” Sex Toy Ring Toss Event

Venice is a beautiful little city on the west coast of Florida. Over the weekend Venice held its third annual Gay Pride Festival. At that festival booths for a variety of companies were set up in Centennial Park which is city owned property.

One of the booths owned by a group called the Can Community Health had men dressed in drag, shirtless men in bizarre costumes dancing and singing to blaring music. There was also a ring toss game that incorporated sex toys. All of this was in clear view of families with young children.

This garnered more attention when videos of the debauchery were posted by Libs of TikTok, a conservative group that uses the lefts own videos against them.

The Libs of TikTok story finished with these remarks:

“It started out with freedom to love whomever you wanted. “Love is love.” Then it was more “representation” and half-naked kink parades. Now, it’s drag queen story hour in elementary schools, kid drag shows, and a dildo ring toss. We’re so far down the slippery slope. Are we finally allowed to call this grooming?”

I have watched these videos and I find them stomach turning. You can clearly see children in close proximity to their disgusting antics. In one video, a shirtless man with balloons fashioned to look like peacock feathers, sits grinding in a woman’s lap before openly groping her breasts from behind.

The group behind this nauseating display labels it as a “safe sex discussion icebreaker.”

The city of Venice tweeted this about the festival:

This past Saturday, the Venice Pride Festival was held in Centennial Park from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. This was not a city sponsored or hosted event. Rather, it was organized and hosted by Venice Pride Inc., which obtained a special event permit for it, due to the use of public property.

This was the first time this event was conducted on city property. It was presented to the city as an event which would be suitable for all ages with an objective to build collaboration around community.

The city was very disappointed to learn that some of the actual event activities did not align with the approved event description. The city of Venice was not informed of and did not approve the details of these activities.

The city has begun reviewing and updating its special event rules and conduct standards to ensure that all future special events are appropriate for the planned location and are conducted as presented in the special event permit application.

Can Community Health bills itself as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the treatment, care, and wellness of people living with HIV.

Typically, as it is with all of these events, those involved either attempt to spin it that those who are offended are not open-minded, or that the whole thing was some type of a misunderstanding. In this case, they are claiming the latter, having already gotten away with it. It sounds like offering a weak explanation is better that getting permission.

Roger Capote is the Vice President of Marketing for Can Health claims that they were not aware the event was billed as family friendly.

“We do apologize for any way that it was misconstrued. Unfortunately, there are a lot of false accusations being made out in the community of what we were doing, but the activities we do provide and the services we provide are geared toward adults.”

He also added that they will be reevaluating activities for future events.

“We want to make sure individuals feel comfortable enough to go ahead and break the ice with a funny activity. That’s exactly what the activity was geared toward, to kind of be light-hearted, at a pride event where it is supposed to be fun and a little bit more open-minded.”

Someone needs to explain to these narcissistic activists, that children don’t need perverted “Icebreakers” and neither do most adults. Stop trying to shove your distorted beliefs down our throats, and then attempt to sluff it off as no big deal.