In a move that critics have slammed as being sick, an 11-year-old boy was made grand marshal of Orlando's Come Out With Pride Festival on Saturday.

According to the Daily Mail, Dempsey Jara was dressed in "pink heart-shaped sunglasses and a floral gown" while blowing "kisses to the crowd."

Mom: Son "has been gender non-conforming since the age of eighteen months old"

Dempsey Jara's mother is a 45-year-old school teacher who refers to her son by female pronouns, and she was quoted as telling the Orlando Sentinel that he " just always gravitated toward girl things, girls' toys.'"

"She'd say, 'I'm a girl in my heart and my brain'. She's been on this journey since she was five and she's living her best life," Mrs. Jara added.

"Dempsey has been gender non-conforming since the age of eighteen months old, basically since she was able to express herself. She always gravitated to dolls, dresses and sparkly objects," the mother insisted.

"Knowing that these items were what she wanted, we bought them because we knew how happy they made her," Mrs. Jara continued.

Democratic congressman says "there is a lot of hate" in Florida

"I feel that in a small way I am doing my part helping the very marginalized transgender community. Being a parent is never easy, it takes everything you have, pretty much every single day," she declared.

Dempsey Jara spoke up as well, telling reporters, "Being transgender is not about a choice. It's about being true to myself.

"It's about embracing who I am even when the world tries to tell me otherwise. It's about standing tall in my identity even when it's really hard," the boy stated.

Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost was also at the event, saying, it "is important because right now across the state there is a lot of hate but today is about love in the 'City Beautiful' Orlando, where we love each other no matter what, with music and everything."

Columnist accuses parents of child abuse

Someone with a different perspective is Breitbart columnist John Nolte. In a recent article, he slammed Dempsey Jara's parents for "allowing a bunch of perverts to exploit him."

"As the saying goes… Having an 11-year-old transgender kid is like having a vegetarian cat… We all know who’s making the decisions here," Nolte argued.

"I expect the left and the corporate media to do evil things like incentivize this kind of mind-warping, forever-damaging child abuse. Evil’s gonna evil," he wrote.

"But to see parents look at their own 18-month-old baby boy and do something like this — that’s beyond my comprehension," Notle stated.