Dwyane Wade is opening up about his family’s decision to relocate from Florida to California due to not feeling “protected” or “safe” in the place he “called home” for over a decade.
“When we had to decide what the next step was for our family as we were all coming together a little bit more, we had to think about our family and how it looked and how we wanted our kids to feel, what we want them to see on a daily basis,” Wade told People.
“Florida just wasn’t it for us at that time anymore.”
While the former shooting guard credits Florida for having “been so amazing for our family” over the years, “going forward, raising our family, it just wasn’t the ideal place.”
Florida has faced backlash in response to legislation passed earlier this year that seemingly targets the LGTBTQ+ community with laws that ban people from using a bathroom that goes against their sex assigned at birth, another law that bans children from watching drag shows, and a law that bans educators from teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity across all grades, CBS News reports.
“It’s just not a place right now that my family and I feel protected, feel safe, feel seen, and I’m thankful that I’m able to speak out on it because I know there’s other families that feel the same way,” Wade says of their decision to leave the Sunshine State.
Now as California residents, Dwyane and Gabrielle are seeing firsthand how much more supportive “the community that my daughter is a part of” is “represented in a way that we felt comfortable,” he shared.
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Source: Black Enterprise
