Chelsea Piers in Heart of Queer NYC Hosts Homophobia for Pride

Sports complex refuses to be responsible for “views”

Why is a notorious homophobic demagogue set to speak in the heart of NYC’s LGBTQ community? And why now?

It’s Pride! Time to protest, party, and honor everything queer! LGBTQ people are less concentrated in “gayborhoods” than we used to be, but New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, just a skip and jump from the Stonewall Inn where Pride got its riotous 1969 kickoff, remains a densely packed gayborhood. Queer people live, work, and play together in an atmosphere of near-total normality and acceptance.

Chelsea really is Pride Central!

Imagine closeted, former military me landing in Chelsea as a young refugee in 1990 — shocked, delighted, and learning to cope with being NORMAL for the first time in my life. Imagine how I met a man, fell in love, moved in, and attended synagogue with him as part of an out/proud gay couple. Imagine how I learned my downstairs neighbor’s teenage son was gay — when he and his new boyfriend smiled at me as they strolled hand-in-hand down crowded 8th Avenue, without a care in the world.

That’s Chelsea! That’s Pride!

The sports/entertainment center Chelsea Piers opened before I left NYC, and while it’s not (strictly speaking) a queer facility, it quickly became a hub of queer life — featuring lesbian softball leagues, gay golfers, drag-queen-themed birthday bashes, you name it. It’s Chelsea, after all, and Chelsea equals Pride.

So why is queer public enemy number one, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, speaking at Chelsea Piers this Sunday?

Controversy has been raging since May, when the Museum of Jewish Heritage canceled an arrangement to host a public event for the conservative Jewish Leadership Conference. Museum officials said a planned speech by Ron DeSantis would be a deal breaker, that his anti-LGBTQ statements and policies don’t “align with the museum’s values and its message of inclusivity.”

Perhaps the Leadership Conference should have taken a close look at the museum’s main website, headed by a warning about “What Hate Can Do.”

Other than the Leadership Conference, which complained about “cancel culture” in a whining Wall Street Journal op-ed, the museum’s position shocked nobody. If any group is overwhelmingly LGBTQ-affirming, it’s New York City Jews. If any group opposes the kind of oppression and persecution DeSantis stands for, it’s New York Jews.

If anybody stands for inclusion and against demagoguery targeting marginalized minorities, it’s New York Jews.

Think back to the synagogue I mentioned. They had an openly lesbian cantor in 1990 and threw weekend tea dances for transgender and gay elders. Can you imagine any Christian church doing that in 1990? That’s how LGBTQ-affirming Jews tend to be, and New York Jews are as affirming as it gets.

Ron DeSantis is a demagogue, and LGBTQ people are his target

DeSantis isn’t just riding a wave of right-wing hysteria over bisexual, gay, and trans people, he’s fueling it for political gain. He’s spreading lies and working to hurt people because he knows that will enrage his voter base.

Examples:

Don’t Say Gay

The newly enacted Florida “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibits public school teachers from discussing LGBTQ people or issues in grades K-3 and makes doing so difficult or impossible in older grades. Tolerance and inclusivity are literally verboten. LGBTQ teachers in Florida are resigning in fear, even in progressive Dade County, and students are reporting a wave of regressive measures to force them into the closet. One valedictorian had to deliver a commencement speech using “curly hair” as a metaphor for gay, because his principal wouldn’t let him say it out loud.

DeSantis, through his press secretary, urged support for the law with scaremongering lies that gay people are likely to sexually abuse children or to “groom” children for sexual abuse.

Declaring gender-affirming care is child abuse

On June 3, reports surfaced that DeSantis is attempting to imitate Texas in declaring by fiat that gender-affirming therapy for transgender kids is child abuse. He’s asked state health officials to override the consensus of the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Board of Pediatrics that professionally supervised gender affirmation is necessary and beneficial.

DeSantis doesn’t want parents to have the freedom to make medical decision for their own children in consultation with their own doctors. He wants to harness voter anger for political gain even though that means persecuting innocent families.

Recently, a 16-year-old trans boy in Texas attempted suicide, citing anti-trans politics as the reason. The state’s response was to send investigators to target the parents because they support their trans son. That’s the kind of persecution DeSantis is trying to duplicate in Florida.

Calls for child abuse investigations of parents over drag queens

Most recently, DeSantis stirred up hatred in a press conference in which he suggested that parents who take their kids to see drag queens should be investigated for child abuse and either go to jail or have their kids taken from them.

His press secretary Christina Pushaw, who often pushes the most toxic of the governor’s lies, backed up her boss’s false claims of sexualization or sexual abuse by tweeting out a photo she had cropped and manipulated — of a woman who is not a drag queen interacting at a strip show for straight people. The kicker? The photo was part of a meme spread three years earlier by a Nazi organization.

A Harvard Law faculty member and queer legal analyst spotted Pushaw’s lie almost instantly, and called it out, but the false claim is still circulating and Pushaw has not issued a retraction. This is what demagogues do. This is a perfect example of why DeSantis is not welcome at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

So why is Chelsea Piers welcoming an anti-LGBTQ demagogue? The answer is scary.

Chelsea Piers insisted yesterday that they would not cancel the event, telling the New York Times that the organization “does not police the views expressed by those who rent its event spaces.”

Really? That can’t be true.

State Senator Brad Hoylman who represents Chelsea has joined many other Democratic politicians and NYC leaders urging Chelsea Piers to say no to hate and demagoguery: “The bottom line is Chelsea Piers is providing a venue to propagate hate toward the LGBTQ community and that is unacceptable on many levels, including that it is Pride and that it is in Chelsea, the heart of the community.”

Chelsea Piers management chooses not to stand up for LGBTQ equality, and that’s really scary, because it means that even in the heart of Chelsea, they don’t think that’s in their interest. They’re riding the anti-LGBTQ backlash wave.

But what about Chelsea Piers’ claim to be viewpoint neutral?

Please, Blanche. Would Chelsea Piers allow the KKK’s David Duke to speak in an events hall? If you think they would, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might like as investment property.

Would a neo-Nazi be welcome at Chelsea Piers? You know the answer as well as I do. Chelsea Piers is a private organization not constrained by the First Amendment. They can welcome or not welcome whomever they please.

They’re in the same shoes as the Museum of Jewish Heritage, who said, in effect, your kind is not welcome here, DeSantis. Bigots, haters, and demagogues need not apply. We know where that can lead. We know far too well. That’s one of the main reasons we exist.

So, hey, Chelsea Piers, what’s wrong with you guys?

Why can’t you be as principled and moral as that Jewish museum? You can and do police views. Your statement declaring otherwise is disingenuous in the extreme.

The truth is, you decided not to stand up for your community.

You won’t police anti-LGBTQ views because you decided those views don’t deserve policing. Shame on you. Look at your name. Chelsea all but stands for LGBTQ Pride. Queer people play tennis at your facilities and then walk to the Stonewall Inn for lunch.

We thought we could count on you as an ally. After all, we’ve showered you with our patronage in the decades since you opened. Should we keep doing that? Why should we?

To my LGBTQ friends and allies, I have this to say: This is how it happens. This is how a slide to persecution starts. Would you like a practical lesson in the details? Spend part of Pride this year visiting the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Docents will be happy to show you what happens when demagogues like Ron DeSantis stir up hatred of the Other.

James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].

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