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Porn Producer's Party Pooper at Pro-Palestine Protest Party!
By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 25, 2011
Modified Feb 25, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 25, 2011
Modified Feb 25, 2011
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Next Saturday night there was supposed to be a raging "Party to End Apartheid!" for Israeli Apartheid Week at the NYC LGBT Center, where the group Siege Busters Working Group meets regularly. (Emily Henochowicz, the Cooper Union student who lost an eye while protesting in Israel last summer, is a member.) There was going to be "DJ sets, guest performances, and great company" from 8 p.m. to midnight. But then along came gay porn producer Michael Lucas, an Israeli-American whom you may recall from such hits as Shameless Hole and Piss Gods, to pour hot oil all over the plan.
The whole thing rubbed Lucas the wrong way, so he fired off a press release and threatened to organize a boycott with some of the center's biggest donors, declaring, “It was an inexcusable decision on the center’s part to associate itself with a hate group like Israeli Apartheid Week." When told that some of the sponsors of the event were Jews, including a Holocaust survivor, Lucas told the Jerusalem Post, "So what! There are a lot of self-hating Jews. They were put into death camps regardless of their IQ."
A day after Lucas aired his beef, the center canceled the party, putting out a terse statement explaining, "We have determined that this event is not appropriate to be held at our LGBT Community Center, which is a safe haven for LGBT groups and individuals. Therefore, the meeting at The Center has been canceled and the host group will no longer meet at The Center." Lucas, who's been called Gay Porn’s Neocon Kingpin, declared victory, saying, "We have prevailed! Congratulations to everyone who stood with me in support of Israel. With your help it took only eight hours to accomplish our mission."
Not feeling so triumphant is Sherry Wolf, a longtime activist for both gay rights and socialism and a member of the Siege Busters Working Group, which will no longer be permitted to meet at the center. She says the LGBT Center didn't even bother to contact her after canceling the party, and tells Runnin' Scared, "We've had... a whole spectrum of political and non-political meetings there. There's a group that meets there of straight people who are into spanking! It's always been a place where people with nowhere else to go could be. It's atrocious that after 28 years, it's becoming yet another occupied, homogenized space that only powerful and, frankly, white people dominate."
Tagged
gay porn
israel
jews
lgbt center
michael lucas
palestine
Porn
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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