Tip O’Neil, the late U.S. Speaker of the House from Massachusetts, once said, “all politics is local.” He was describing how the spirit of America’s towns and cities affects what their legislators do in Washington. The same could be said of the LGBT community: what happens at the municipal level can have a great impact on the national movement.

I’ve been thinking a lot about O’Neil’s quote these past few weeks, as the fray over Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle and his spew of antigay bigotry has intensified. Naugle’s comments ranged from the idiotic (he doesn’t call gay people gay because he says most “aren’t happy”) to the offensive (the city should stop marketing to gay tourists because of the high HIV rates in the area).

Days after Naugle’s public tirade began, a few people in Fort Lauderdale’s gay community formed a group called Unite Fort Lauderdale. Within weeks, they’d spurred activism online and off, first calling for Naugle to apologize and, when he refused, staging a demonstration outside city hall that attracted nearly 1,000 people, including national activists like my friend Matt Foreman, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

At the rally Foreman said Naugle’s comments were not merely offensive to Fort Lauderdale’s residents but that they “demean gay people from coast to coast.”

Sure enough the response from LGBT communities across the country has been enormous. Many national groups have joined the Task Force in calling for the city and county commissions to condemn Naugle. And I’ve heard more than a few people say that they will now think twice before traveling to Fort Lauderdale, which ranks high as a destination for gay travelers.

As a community we’ve had success in voting with our purses, so to speak. Remember back in the early 90s when the Colorado legislature passed its heinous antigay legislation that led to our historic U.S. Supreme Court victory Romer v. Evans? You couldn’t find a gay skier on the slopes. On the flipside, surveys show that LGBT people like visiting places where our communities are treated well.

For travelers looking to support localities doing good for their LGBT residents, I might suggest a few places in Washington State. In recent weeks, such cities as Bellevue, Newcastle and Redmond have voted to extend domestic partner health benefits to their public employees. It all began in Bellevue, where Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of two firefighters and a 911 dispatcherwho for years had faced unequal treatment in the workplace. While the city routinely provided health benefits to partners of married employees, it refused to give the same benefits to employees’ same-sex partners.

In less than two months, the Bellevue City Council saw the inequality inherent in this scheme and approved a family benefits plan for gay and lesbian public employees. The attention generated around the case locally through the media and nationally through Lambda Legal’s Clock In for Equality workplace day of action paid off when a couple of police officers from the city of Redmond contacted us a few weeks later with a similar story of discrimination. This time we were able to convince the city to approve family benefits for gay and lesbian public employees simply by writing a letter. That plan is expected to be finalized later this month.

As a national organization, Lambda Legal recognizes that what happens at the local level can make a big difference in people’s daily lives. That’s why we file lawsuits and do advocacy work at every level. And it’s why people all over the country are supporting Unite Fort Lauderdale in its efforts to combat a mayor who thrives on homophobia. Let’s hope city officials in Florida take a cue from their colleagues in Washington State.