It began fairly innocently enough: a group called Siege Busters, composed of a few people (I gather) ardently against the Israeli blockade of Hamas-led Gaza, wanted to have a party (or program) at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street and they wanted to call it “Anti-Israeli Apartheid Week.” Siege Busters had actually met at the Center before, and the person in the Center office responsible for booking rooms, in the Center’s long-standing tradition of inclusiveness (which it actually has, despite some posturing by Center critics to the contrary) booked the room.
News of the meeting/party was put up on the Center’s website, and from there all heck broke loose. Several well-placed and well-heeled supporters of the Center, which it needs, because, after all, the Center is in New York and not Nebraska, went into a screaming fit. They organized a phone blitz on the Center’s staff, threatening the new ED of the Center, Glenda Testone, and other staff members, that if this offense to Israel were allowed to take place, they would “reconsider” all of their past support for the Center and cut off every penny to it in the future.
Primary among them was porn-star entrepeneur Michael Lucas, who ran an email blast to his several thousand nearest-and-dearest asking them to “Boycott the LGBT Center,” stating of course that Israel is America’s only democratic ally in the Middle East (no lie) and that only in Israel are gays and lesbians given any real chance for personal freedom and freedom from injury and possible death, as they are in the rest of the Arab-Moslem world. (Again, no lie: you can slice this and dice it as many ways as you wish, but it is the unfortunate truth.)
