One member was absent from her usual seat at Wednesday’s meeting of the board established by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to punish Disney for opposing his “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Instead, there were only the letters BZ on a screen.
Bridget Ziegler—the Moms for Liberty co-founder who finds herself in the middle of a ménage à trois sex scandal alongside her husband, Christian Ziegler, who is now the subject of a criminal probe—is such a coward that she dared not show her face, even on Zoom.
By her account, Ziegler laid the groundwork for the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, which prohibits “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity.” She stood beaming directly behind DeSantis at the bill signing ceremony. And she was clearly thrilled when the governor rewarded her with a seat on the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board, which he installed to govern the area encompassing Disney World that the company had overseen itself through an arrangement with the state dating back a half century.
But an appointment that affirmed Ziegler’s status as a rising star of the far right seemed to become proof of monumental hypocrisy in recent days after a search warrant affidavit revealed she told a detective that she and her husband, Christian Ziegler, had engaged in a “longstanding consensual three-way sexual relationship” with another woman, who claimed that Christian Ziegler raped her in October.
The primary item on Wednesday’s agenda was the unveiling of a report that the DeSantis-appointed board commissioned to document supposed failings during Disney’s long self-governance. The report will only serve to muddy the real reason DeSantis scrapped the long-standing arrangement with the company.
The meeting began with a public comment session that was largely a succession of minority small business owners who say they will benefit from the new arrangement.
But there was also Debra McDonald, who has lived for a quarter century in Celebration, a Disney-built development. She began by reciting the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and said that it was her belief DeSantis’ ongoing war on Disney is ultimately an attack on free speech.
She had seen the BZ on the screen and remarked that Ziegler was attending virtually.
“It’s not my place to judge her behavior or that of her husband,” McDonald added. “They deserve their day in court.”
McDonald also during her comments that DeSantis has called for Christian Ziegler to resign his position as head of the Florida GOP.
“Bridget should follow,” McDonald continued. “Mrs. Ziegler has not made Florida a better place. She is the face of the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ revolution, which brought this board to where it is, to this place today, and has caused untold harm in our classrooms and in our communities.”
McDonald, a former stockbroker who is not employed by Disney and serves on the board of several nonprofits, reported that she knows of many families that have felt compelled to leave Celebration for places outside Florida, feeling that “the state is persecuting them and their children.
“[Bridget Ziegler’s] role in demonizing members of the LGBTQ community is hurting the state, while she has apparently been a part of the letter B in that group,” McDonald wryly observed.
Then she addressed BZ directly.
“Bridget, you need to do what is best for the greater good,” McDonald said. “We live in a free Florida, not an autocratic pseudo-Christian dictatorship.”
McDonald again spoke to the board as a whole.
“What Mrs. Ziegler does privately with other consenting adults is no more our business than it is the behavior of the other consenting adults,” McDonald said. “It is the rank hypocrisy of attacking others for what she personally practices that should disqualify her for a position of public trust.”
With that, McDonald returned to her seat in the audience. The shameless BZ remained on the screen as the board heard from experts it had commissioned to document the failings of Disney when it governed the district. Nobody spoke of the many people who had labored to make the Disney and the surrounding district prosper—only to be driven out by DeSantis-stoked bigotry.
The Celebration residents who fled included a good friend of McDonald’s who had received a “Legacy Award,” an honor which Disney bestows on less than 1 percent of its “cast members.”
“It’s a very, very high honor,” McDonald told The Daily Beast.
The friend has now left after two decades of service.
“He is gay and didn’t feel safe, welcome,” she said.
But such matters are of no apparent concern to the board. The chair, Marvin Garcia, instead expressed outrage about such matters as Disney’s apparent failure to record free passes as a taxable income for the recipients. Whatever sins Disney may have committed, they do not excuse the fears and hatred that DeSantis roused while furthering his political ambitions.
As the meeting neared a close, Board Chair Martin Garcia called for a vote on what he termed “the independent audit prepared by a number of very qualified experts.” Garcia then called for a vote. Bridget Ziegler had apparently resigned as a vice-present with the ultra-conservative Leadership Institute, but she was still on the board and an “aye” came from the cowardly hypocrite who attended the meeting only as BZ.
“Let the record reflect that the motion passes unanimously,” Garcia said.
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