Fight OUT Loud was founded by Waymon Hudson and Anthony Niedwiecki as a result of a 2007 incident where an employee at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport played an anti-gay death threat over the intercom quoting a Bible verse from Leviticus reading "men that lie with men as with women should be put to death." The couple complained but no action was taken until they alerted local and national media outlets. According to Hudson, the incident became an international news story. According to the group they had over 5000 members in less than four months of doing their free online action alerts. Their first cause after the airport incident was supporting two 14-year-old lesbians in Portland, Oregon who were verbally abused by the bus driver as he was kicking them off the bus for kissing. The group worked with the teens and their mothers, the Portland transit department issued an apology in response to the concerns.
National Recognition
In 2007 Fight OUT Loud became a leader in the effort to address Fort Lauderdale, Florida Mayor Jim Naugle's comments about the gay community. Comments Naugle made about alleged use of a planned $250,000 robotic toilet in Fort Lauderdale's beach to prevent sexual encounters between men caused protests from the local community. In a press release and in public rallies they tied his official public statements to violent anti-gay incidents. The protests and campaign led to Naugle's removal from Broward County's Tourism Board, and the proposed toilet was eliminated from the budget. In 2008 the group announce the first four members of their newly formed national board of advisors including: Chip Arndt ; Matt Foreman ; David Mixner ; and Pam Spaulding. In 2010 Hudson and Niedwiecki moved to Chicago and continue to coordinate the group's work from there online. In 2011 the organization was the beneficiary of "Rock Out Loud," a music concert and anti hate crimes rally at Nova Southeastern University.
Co-Founder Anthony Niedwiecki
A law professor and administrator at Broward County's Shepard Broadlaw school, Niedwiecki and his husband Waymon Hudson were co-founders of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgenderlobby group Fight OUT Loud, and led an activist campaign against former Fort Lauderdale mayor Jim Naugle after Naugle made a number of anti-gay statements. The couple also lobbied the Florida State Senate to overturn the state's ban on gay adoption, after taking in a foster child who had been abandoned as "unadoptable" by the state because of the child's HIV status. The couple wed in California in before Proposition 8 passed in June 2008 and remain legally married as one of 18,000 couples still wed after the anti-gay marriage proposition passed.
