Although I have for more than a decade lived in the Pacific Northwest in the area of Portland, Oregon and its surrounding communities, I have still spent a majority of my life as a resident of the state of Florida and can with some pride consider myself a Florida man. This is not ordinarily a source of pride, as within the United States as a whole, Florida is considered to be a place where weird things happen. Indeed, the large amounts of weird stories that spring from Florida are so notable that a large amount of largely ignorant and misguided discourse consists of seeking to explain why so many strange things happen in Florida. This discourse is united not because strange things do not happen in Florida, but rather that there are larger systemic questions at play that make it seem that more weird things happen in Florida than in many other areas where the knowledge of the weird stories that go on are less accessible to inquiring minds who want to know.

One of the most notable aspects of Florida’s political culture, and one that has not been repeated elsewhere on a state or federal level, is the intense commitment the state has to sunshine. Florida is called, aptly, the sunshine state, and even more decisive in deserving this monicker than its sunny climate is its characteristic approach to sunshine as a means of purifying the tendency of governments the world over to hide their sins and corruption behind a shroud of secrecy. Florida’s requirements in its Sunshine law require every aspect of life relating to its government to be publicly posted and to be generally accessible to others. Every mugshot, every report that is filed by a policeman, every governmental meeting from the level of a homeowner’s association to school boards, city councils, county commissioners, court hearings, and the actions of state legislators and governors themselves is to be made accessible to the people. As a result, far more is known about the goings on of people in Florida who have any interaction with government and the agencies of government than is the case in other parts of the country where people in power would want their corrupt dealings to escape public notice.

At times this commitment to openness within the state of Florida has hit somewhat close to home personally speaking. About a dozen years ago, I was falsely accused of being the source of information for a lawsuit involving a dispute over property after a church split, having been accused of filing a complaint under a false name. The lawsuit, of course, occurred in Florida and as a result was a matter of public record. Some time before that, a personal acquaintance of mine, who had been a successful Florida politician, had found himself running afoul of anticorruption efforts while he served in public office, which eventually ended his lengthy political career on the state and local level and even jeopardized his family’s successful run as local restaurant owners. While I was a young adult, someone I personally knew, although not very well, had an unfortunate interaction with local police officers while in a bad mental state, and because of the state’s laws concerning freedom of information, ended up having her embarrassing story go viral, where I ended up being informed of the story when coworkers of mine had read the story in a “news of the weird” collection and I found, much to my surprise, that the name of my acquaintance had been shared along with the story of her involuntary psychiatric care when the police officers Baker acted her and then, foolishly, tried to charge her of a crime afterwards. This was viewed, thankfully, by the court as a case of double jeopardy and the charge was thrown out. Still, these stories are testament to the shame and embarrassment that can result from having one’s personal life exposed to public ridicule.

Apart from seeking to understand why it is that people in Florida do things that the rest of the United States (and even potentially the world) find to be weird is that we must also account for the way that Florida has enshrined the right to know about anything relating to its public business in a way that is, to my knowledge, unparalleled in the world today. Many governments and not-for-profit organizations pay lip service to the ideal of transparency, and realize that the appearance of openness can be important in helping to encourage a feeling of trust that if bad things exist, they will be subject to public knowledge and potentially to responses that can redress wrongs. Few areas, though, have the same commitment to transparency in practice, because powerful people often seek privacy as a means of shielding themselves from the knowledge of their corrupt deeds. And while society in Florida as a whole benefits from the awareness that public business is public without any excuses, those whose lives only peripherally deal with the public, and that in their worst moments, are likely less pleased that their worst moments become the sources of public fascination with the strangeness of human behavior.

If we wanted a true comparison of the extent (if any) that behavior in Florida was any more weird than that in other areas, we would have to be able to compare the full extent of such behavior across areas. This would counter the feeling in other areas that, for example, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, while what happens in Florida ends up going viral in news of the weird stories. It must be admitted that there are other places that cherish the reputation of being weird, like that of Portland, Oregon, for example, although Florida more celebrates its openness, and it is the openness that results in a reputation for weirdness that may be undeserved. How does Florida’s openness serve the interests of its people? Is the shame that results to people whose behavior runs afoul of requirements to report everything in a way that is accessible to anyone who wants to know repaid for by other knowledge that is well worth knowing? That is an exploration for another day.