Where the Idiots Are

Everybody with even the tiniest conscience has a mental travel checklist. Boyfriend wants to go to the Caribbean? Not while they're greeting gay cruises with guns. Myanmar? Nope: torturing monks is sooo passé. Well, how about Fort Lauderdale?

Surely you're joking. Right?

Fort Lauderdale is right up there with Iraq when it comes to welcoming gay tourists. First a gay couple is greeted at the airport by a recital of Leviticus over the public address system. You know, that “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, they should be put to death" part. The straights search for their Samsonite luggage on the baggage carousel while the gays nervously eye the place for gangs of armed thugs. Next to a pina colada and a lei, that's how I like to start my vacations.

Then the mayor comes out swinging with both fists. He says the city's public restrooms are veritable hotbeds of gay sex. (They average three arrests a month for public lewdness, both gay and straight, so if we're really doing it everywhere the police must be even stupider than the mayor.) He opposes a public library's plan to collect gay books, and refuses to use the word “gay” because "most of them aren’t gay, they are unhappy.”

Naturally, reaction is swift. A San Francisco newspaper declares a boycott. Conventions are cancelled. The gays immediately change their vacation plans. Make it Palm Springs. Make it Cancun. Make it Puerto Vallarta.

But after an all-expenses-paid junket that includes an "enormous" hotel suite, a trip to "Butterfly World," and a ride on a Segway, one gay journalist isn't afraid to take a different stand.

Nobody there has even heard of the boycott, Neal Broverman says in the latest Advocate. Nobody cares. The mayor can rattle on and on about how we're ruining their city, but as long as there's hot men and alcohol there, we won't be able to stay away.

Uh, dude, thanks for that. Now I've got two questions for you.

1. Did you think maybe none of the tourists there have heard about the boycott because everybody who has is STAYING AWAY?

2. Next time you think about writing, why don't you lay in the sun and drink instead?

Where the Idiots Are