DeSantis Event at Chelsea Piers Faces Backlash Over L.G.B.T.Q. Rights
The Florida governor who signed the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill is scheduled
to speak at a site long connected to the gay rights movement.
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[Gov. Ron DeSantis is scheduled to speak on Sunday at an event at Chelsea
Piers. Gay rights activists plan to protest outside the complex.]
Gov. Ron DeSantis is scheduled to speak on Sunday at an event at Chelsea Piers.
Gay rights activists plan to protest outside the complex. Credit...Ronda
Churchill/Getty Images
[Gov. Ron DeSantis is scheduled to speak on Sunday at an event at Chelsea
Piers. Gay rights activists plan to protest outside the complex.]
[Liam Stack]<https://www.nytimes.com/by/liam-stack>
By Liam Stack<https://www.nytimes.com/by/liam-stack>
June 11, 2022
For the second time this spring, a New York City institution is facing a
backlash over a conservative Jewish
conference<https://www.jewishleadershipconference.org/>, long in the planning,
because of one of its featured speakers: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
In May, the Museum of Jewish Heritage backed out of a tentative rental
agreement<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/nyregion/desantis-jewish-museum-tikvah.html>
to host the event. Now, Chelsea Piers, a recreation complex with a large event
space at its Manhattan location and which agreed to host the conference this
weekend, is being widely criticized by elected officials and activist groups
who say that Mr. DeSantis should not speak at a site that has played an
important role in New York’s L.G.B.T.Q. history.
Earlier this year, Mr. DeSantis signed legislation that prohibited classroom
discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation for some age groups in
Florida schools, known by opponents as the “Don’t Say
Gay<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/us/dont-say-gay-bill-florida.html>” bill.
The event, the Jewish Leadership Conference, was organized by the Tikvah Fund,
a conservative Jewish organization, which said it invited Mr. DeSantis to
deliver a speech about the vibrancy of Jewish life in Florida.
But when the Museum of Jewish Heritage learned of Mr. DeSantis’s participation,
its leadership pulled out of the event, telling Tikvah that the legislation was
not in line with its values of inclusivity.
Tikvah then arranged to hold the conference at Chelsea Piers, and publicly
accused the museum of engaging in cancel culture in a Wall Street Journal
opinion
piece<https://www.wsj.com/articles/holocaust-memorial-new-york-museum-jewish-heritage-ron-desantis-judaism-florida-cancel-culture-tivka-speech-event-aoc-censorship-11651759681?mod=article_inline>.
Officials at the sports complex were not aware of the dispute with the museum
before that essay was published on May 5, a spokesman said.
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Now, facing the threat of protests and boycotts, the recreation complex finds
itself at the center of a pitched dispute that touches on issues of identity,
inclusivity, religion and free speech. And it has left Chelsea Piers in a
quandary that is in many ways emblematic of the tense — and intensely political
— national conversation around whether people with views that some consider
abhorrent or dangerous should be given a platform.
“The bottom line is Chelsea Piers is providing a venue to propagate hate toward
the L.G.B.T.Q. community and that is unacceptable on many levels, including
that it is Pride and that it is in Chelsea, the heart of the community,” said
State Senator Brad Hoylman, the Manhattan Democrat who represents the area. He
has helped lead calls for Chelsea Piers to cancel the event, which will also
feature speeches<https://www.jewishleadershipconference.org/#speakers> by
former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ron Dermer, the former Israeli
ambassador to the United States.
On Friday, Chelsea Piers responded to the uproar by saying that it will not
cancel the event and that it does not police the views expressed by those who
rent its event spaces. Instead, it said it would donate the money it received
from the event to “groups that protect L.G.B.T.Q.+ communities, and foster and
amplify productive debates about L.G.B.T.Q.+ issues.”
“We could not disagree more strongly with many of Ron DeSantis’ actions in
office,” it said in an unsigned email to staff members. “One response to
abhorrent behavior is to counter it with positive action.”
A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis declined to address the controversy and instead
described the governor as a champion of religious liberty and a friend of
Israel.
“He has defended religious Floridians and their right to assemble and practice
their religion in spite of attempts from the left to lockdown places of
worship,” the campaign said. “The governor will always stand up for what is
right and will not be deterred by the radical left.”
Eric Cohen, the chief executive of the Tikvah Fund, declined to comment on the
latest round of controversy on Friday, writing in an email that he was choosing
to focus “on the event itself” and that the group was looking forward to “an
important conference, with roughly 20 speakers, on the great questions facing
the Jewish people, America, Israel and the West.”
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In an interview last month, after the conference was left without a venue, Mr.
Cohen rejected the idea that Tikvah was holding a partisan program.
“Our event endorses no candidates and serves no political party,” Mr. Cohen
said. “It is all about ideas.”
The decision by Chelsea Piers to donate money to L.G.B.T.Q. groups has not
mollified critics, who are organizing a protest in front of Pier 60 on Sunday
to coincide with the conference.
The New York City Gay Hockey Association, which has been based at Chelsea Piers
for more than two decades, wrote a letter to the complex’s management, saying
its members felt “disappointment, sadness and even repulsion.” It demanded the
event’s cancellation.
“The Museum of Jewish Heritage declined to host this event,” the group’s board
wrote. “We wish Pier 60 had approached this with the same scrutiny and
reverence for the community it serves, as well as the larger Chelsea Piers
community.”
Other groups are canceling upcoming events at Chelsea Piers. Rich Ferraro, a
spokesman for GLAAD, the L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group, said his organization would
“refrain from future events” at the complex, “given the platform that Chelsea
Piers is giving to one of the most anti-L.G.B.T.Q. and dangerous politicians
today.”
The Ali Forney Center, a group that works with homeless L.G.B.T.Q. youth in New
York, said on Friday that it would no longer be holding a program there next
month.
“People are saying this issue is about freedom of speech, but it is not. It is
in response to DeSantis silencing freedom of speech in schools,” the group’s
president, Alex Roque, wrote in a statement.
Mr. Roque said the event was “a triple insult” because it was happening during
Pride Month; in a gay neighborhood at a recreation complex used by many gay
people and their families; and in a complex built on a site that holds unique
significance in New York’s gay history.
Chelsea Piers was built in the mid-1990s, but the site’s original piers had
been constructed for the docking of ocean liners and other large ships in the
early 1900s.
Image
[The scene at the piers in 1978.]
The scene at the piers in 1978.Credit...Paul Hosefros/The New York Times
[The scene at the piers in 1978.]
By the 1960s, the piers had fallen into disrepair, but they were soon reborn as
a ramshackle refuge for homeless L.G.B.T.Q. young people and as a well-known
waterside hangout for gay men and others.
The area became synonymous with a clandestine sort of gay freedom in the years
after the Stonewall
uprising<https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-28/>, in 1969, which
occurred at the nearby Stonewall Inn and is widely seen as the birth of the
modern gay rights movement.
The area also drew artists and photographers, who depicted the scene at the
piers in works that have been shown in recent, well-received exhibitions at
venues like the Bronx Museum of the
Arts<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/arts/design/alvin-baltrop-photographs.html>
and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in
Manhattan.<https://www.leslielohman.org/exhibitions/the-piers-art-and-sex-along-the-new-york-waterfront>
“This could not be happening in a worse location,” Mr. Roque said. “And it
sends really conflicting messages about what Chelsea Piers cares about. Their
Instagram right now is full of posts about Pride Month, but doing this is
totally the opposite of that.”
Liam Stack is a religion correspondent on the Metro desk, covering New York,
New Jersey and Connecticut. He was previously a political reporter based in New
York and a Middle East correspondent based in Cairo.
@liamstack<https://twitter.com/liamstack>
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________________________________
From: Eric Russell
Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2022 8:27 AM
To: uupad@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <uupad@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: DeSantis speaks in Chelsea
When is free speech just an example of bigotry at a Gay landmark? He claims to
be for freedom but acts for suppression. Eric
DeSantis Event at Chelsea Piers Faces Backlash Over L.G.B.T.Q. Rights - The New
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The Florida governor who signed the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill is scheduled
to speak at a site long connected to the gay rights movement.
www.nytimes.com
