Content warning: This article contains an image depicting anti-LGBTQ+ violence. Reader discretion is advised.
Naples Pride held its annual community event at Cambier Park in Naples, Florida, on June 7, attracting thousands of attendees despite a years-long opposition campaign by hard-right groups and local government.
Naples Pride overcame a last-minute legal challenge from the city of Naples. Dozens of community organizations, local businesses and religious groups sponsored the event.
The day before the event, a federal appeals court ordered the Pride group to move its planned drag performance from an outdoor stage to an age-restricted indoor venue on the other side of the public park. The eleventh-hour order responded to the city’s appeal of a lower court ruling. The ruling barred the city from conditioning Naples Pride’s event permit on a requirement to cover $30,000 in security fees and to restrict the location of the group’s planned drag performance. As Hatewatch previously reported, free speech advocates have called the city’s actions a “heckler’s veto.”
Explaining the 2-1 decision, the court said: “The city did not add the two permit conditions because of perceptions or discomfort. The conditions were added, as Naples Pride agreed, because they were ‘necessary’ to address ‘safety concerns’ and to ensure ‘the safety of [its] guests.’” Members of the Naples City Council have supported protests against Naples Pride’s drag performance, and the city cited the increasingly violent protests against Pride as reason for the security fee in January.
Now, evidence from social media appears to reveal connections between the city’s political establishment and extremist groups in opposition to the Pride event. Days before the event, an online rumor that the hate group the Proud Boys would attend Pride was posted by a local anti-LGBTQ+ Facebook page called GAP Stand. (GAP is an acronym for “Great American Patriots.”) Proud Boys have been associated with violent confrontations like the events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and violent anti-LGBTQ+ activism in recent years.
A member of the Collier County Republican Executive Committee (CCREC or simply Collier GOP) who is connected to the Facebook page repeated the rumor to the local press three days later, suggesting violent confrontations between Proud Boys and antifa would occur and public safety was in jeopardy if the event was not canceled. A review of social media shows that at least two former Proud Boys — Chris Worrell and Jason Beal — are closely connected to the CCREC.
About six Proud Boys protested the well-attended Pride event in Naples. In addition, the week of the Pride celebration, one of CCREC’s affiliate clubs, the Hispanic Republican Club of Collier (HRCC), announced plans to host former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Worrell at a July 15 event.
On the day of the Pride event, an HRCC member posted a video featuring interviews with Worrell and John Strand to their Facebook page called Radically Right. Strand is a former actor who was sentenced to three years in prison and later pardoned by President Donald Trump for his role in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol. According to the Department of Justice, on Jan. 6, Strand “joined the mob pushing past officers, including one who was injured during the surge.” In the video, Strand is wearing a Collier GOP name tag.
On social media, Naples Pride shared a message for those who wanted to stop the event. “Our community showed up in spite of the fear-mongering campaign meant to intimidate us and shut us down. … We showed up louder, prouder, and more united than ever,” the group said. “We will not be erased. We will not be silenced. And we will always show up for each other.”
Opportunism in local politics
Local LGBTQ+ activists say the groups targeting Pride are using falsehoods and conspiracy theories about LGBTQ+ people to win elections. “They don’t have anything to say, so they use our community [to get elected],” Naples Pride Executive Director Cori Craciun said.
Craciun also pointed out that the permit for Pride was approved without public controversy before 2022. Since then, as Hatewatch previously reported, members of the city council have encouraged protesters to attend council meetings, furnished them with email updates and hosted a virtual town hall to discuss “stopping Naples drag.”
The proximity of extremists to the local GOP and city council gives the appearance that extremist views are acceptable to the community, according to Pride supporters. Reflecting on the close ties between anti-LGBTQ+ groups and the city council, Pride board member Callhan Soldavini said, “There really is intimate involvement that we don’t see in other places.” The local GOP and politicians “give the appearance of support by not calling it out,” local interfaith organizer Amy Perwien said. “To not hear it denounced is very common, and it is poisoning the water here.”
The Collier GOP’s relative dominance in local elections also gives the appearance that there is more support for banning drag than meets the eye. Local activists say, however, that extremist voices in the political establishment are vocal, but represent a small group that sometimes even alienates its own supporters. “When I start recognizing people and hear the same voices, it’s like the same old, same old,” Perwien said. “They look loud, they look bigger, but it’s not the numbers that it looks to be,” she added.
Naples Pride takes encouragement from the community’s outpouring of support for Pride in 2025. Contrary to claims from extremists and their allies on the city council that the community does not want to celebrate Pride, “Naples showed up,” Craciun said.
In addition, Pride supporters interviewed by Hatewatch say local politicians are too afraid to speak out, but they have to find the courage to denounce hate and extremism. “I wish there could be more [who denounce extremism] because I think it would quickly unravel. By not showing them you’re not afraid or not doing anything about it, you embolden it,” Craciun said.
GAP Stand mentions the Proud Boys
On June 1, the GAP Stand Facebook page posted an ominous message to its nearly 5,000 followers, saying that Naples Pride was the “back of the bus” moment for Christian conservatives and “Proud Boy groups from as far away as Washington State … are all prepared to rumble.”
The post claimed that “public safety” required government officials to “shut it down.”
The post tagged the Collier GOP Facebook page and was accompanied by an image of two figures, one in white with “GAP” superimposed on the head kicking another depicted in rainbow colors apparently doubled over from the blow. The post disappeared several days later. But archives of comments on the image thread show the GAP Stand page responding to one commenter who said, “Violence is not the answer” with the message, “Only for the protection of women and children. That is our responsibility.”
In response to another commenter who claimed the post was promoting violence, GAP Stand posted that Jesus “told people if you hurt one of these children it would be better if I tied a rock around you [sic] neck and threw you in the Gulf of America,” a misquote of the Bible that includes a reference to Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.
Tim Carpenter, a local activist and member of the CCREC, administers the GAP Stand Facebook page. Carpenter also runs a men’s Bible-study group also called GAP (Godly Accountability Partners) that meets weekly at a Naples business owned by Alfie Oakes, a Southwest Florida grocer who funded a bus trip to Washington, D.C., in January 2021. Oakes is also a CCREC member and former GOP state committeeman for Collier County. According to Oakes’ social media, in July 2024, he traveled to Louisiana to meet Strand after he was released from federal custody following his pardon by Trump.
On June 4, the Gulf Coast ABC affiliate reported that the CCREC was planning a protest of the Pride event and quoted a member of the party, Jay Kohlhagen, saying: “Maybe the Proud Boys might be making an appearance. We heard something like that. We heard maybe that they might be showing up. We also heard that antifa might be showing up.”
There were no reports of antifa being among the protesters or attendees at the event.
Kohlhagen frequently engages with the GAP Stand Facebook page, and the GAP Stand page has shared posts by Kohlhagen to its followers. In one video Kohlhagen posted and GAP Stand shared on May 28, a local pastor said, “On Saturday, June 7, our kids are going to be put in danger at our very own Cambier Park.” The pastor called on viewers to “come … and stand up for the rights of our children.” Commenting on the Radically Right video featuring Worrell and Strand, Kohlhagen posted, “Awesome job everyone!”
In a 2022 Facebook post, former Proud Boys member Chris Worrell’s fiancee, Trish Priller, posted a photo with Worrell and former Proud Boys member Jason Beal writing, “So thankful for wonderful friends!!!”; a 2020 post shows Beal with former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. (Screenshots from Facebook)
Worrell’s fiancee, Trish Priller, is a member of the CCREC and stood for election as a committeewoman for the group in 2024. In a 2022 Facebook post, Priller posted a photo with Worrell and Jason Beal, writing, “So thankful for wonderful friends!” One of Beal’s posts from 2020 shows a photo that was reportedly removed from Facebook for violating the site’s policies on “dangerous individuals and organizations.” The photo shows Beal kneeling and more than one dozen other Proud Boys around him, some making the “OK” hand gesture associated with far-right groups. Worrell can be seen standing in the back of the image.
Another 2020 post shows Beal with former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. In June, Tarrio and other members of the Proud Boys who were previously convicted on charges related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit alleging their prosecutions violated the U.S. Constitution. As Hatewatch previously reported, the group was represented by a white nationalist lawyer who helped organize the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
In 2022, Beal was the musical entertainment at a Collier County rally for then-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio sponsored by the Republican Men’s Club of Collier County. In 2024, Beal performed for the Collier County Citizens Values Political Action Committee (CCCVPAC) at an event featuring numerous candidates for local government, including Collier County Commissioner Chris Hall.
Hall did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Since 2020, the CCCVPAC has raised over $100,000 for political activities in the county, which includes “Support[ing] social club Membership, Target[ing] specific demographics for Club memberships (e.g. Young Republicans, Hispanics, East Naples),” according to its website.
Liberty Counsel connection
On April 30, the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief, also known as a “friend of the court” brief, supporting the city of Naples’ permit restrictions. The brief was filed on behalf of three city residents. On May 7, Liberty Counsel filed a petition to intervene as co-counsel on behalf of the residents to defend the city’s permit. Liberty Counsel attorney Kristina Heuser is listed as counsel on both documents.
Heuser is a member of the CCREC and a state committeewoman for the GOP in Florida, and she was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to the board of trustees for Florida SouthWestern State College. According to public comments, Heuser moved to Collier County in 2019. She was elected as state committeewoman in 2024, having been endorsed by both the CCCVPAC and Oakes, the grocer.
In a May 9 Facebook post, GAP Stand shared an update from Liberty Counsel that included a link to the amicus brief. Two of the three amici named by Heuser are residents Teddy Collins and his wife. Collins is a CCREC committeeman and frequently interacts with the GAP Stand page. On May 14, he urged his followers to pressure the city council to “retain Liberty Counsel” to defend the lawsuit brought by Naples Pride.
“The city attorney apparently avoided the whole defense that the drag show was inappropriate and didn’t provide evidence or argument that it was lewd (likely because they are caught up in the politics of not offending the community suing them),” Collins wrote. Collins tagged GAP Stand, City Councilman Terry Hutchison and Hall, the county commissioner, among several others, in the post.
Hutchison did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
In September 2024, Heuser was an allied attorney with the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom and spoke to the Florida Foundation for Freedom Conference in Orlando about her authorship of a “Bill of Rights sanctuary county ordinance,” adopted in 2023 for Collier County. Hall also spoke at the event. In her remarks, she praised Richard Mack, president of the antigovernment group Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, for inspiring the ordinance. The ordinance gives the county power to “refuse to cooperate with federal government officials in response to unconstitutional federal government measures,” according to local media.
In 2023, Heuser applied for the position of interim city attorney in Naples, according to public records. After Hutchison received an emailed request for comment from Hatewatch for another story, he forwarded the message to Heuser, Hatewatch found as part of a public records request. “These people are evil. I would not offer comment,” Heuser said in the February 2025 email.
Image at top: A member of the Proud Boys is seen outside the Naples Pride event in Naples, Florida, on June 7, 2025. (Screenshot from YouTube/FreedomNewsTV-National/Scootercaster)