Brooklyn Owen (formerly Seth Owen ( years old)) is an American LGBTQ activist and student from Jacksonville, Florida. She came to national attention in 2018 when the story of her being ostracized by her Southern Baptist parents for being gay compelled a GoFundMe campaign for her education to go viral. The fund was intended to just cover her tuition at Georgetown University. When it surpassed the goal, she used the surplus to create a scholarship fund organization to help other LGBTQ youth in “volatile home situations”. As of 2019, she is the youth ambassador for the Human Rights Campaign, an intern with Representative Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), and president at Unbroken Horizons Scholarship Foundation, Inc. In 2021, Owen announced that she was running for the Florida Senate, for the seat held by Audrey Gibson, who is term-limited. Early life/education Brooklyn Owen's family is deeply religious, and are devout members of Pecan Park Baptist Church, on the north side of Jacksonville, Florida. Her whole family is involved in the church, with her dad being the church deacon, and her mom the church treasurer. She describes her childhood hometown as a "very conservative, very ultra-religious, restrictive Southern Baptist community." Her family would "disparage queer folks" going back to her earliest memories; her father would yell "faggot" at the television. In high school she was captain of the swim team and "an academic all-star". When she was a sophomore her father, while spending hours going through Brooklyn's phone, found a photo of her kissing her first boyfriend, and her parents "questioned [her] all night" because she still presented as male and they thought she was gay. Her parents then sent her for a controversial practice, conversion therapy with a Christian counselor, with the intention of making Brooklyn heterosexual. She later said the most toxic aspect of the ordeal was that she "desperately wanted it to work, just so I could survive life at home". During her high school junior year she avoided home by working three jobs and many extracurricular activities, as a way to deal with the tension from her parents. Brooklyn stated, as an "ambitious 17-year-old high school junior, I was working three jobs. I registered for dual enrollment college courses, every honor society, and every extracurricular school activity I could fit in my schedule." She did so to avoid dealing with her family, she felt their church was teaching them "painful,