Years ago we took some heat for advocating a boycott of Fort Lauderdale during the middle of a big crackdown on local sex venues. It only seemed logical to me at the time that Cruisers who might be planning vacations to Fort Lauderdale might want to look elsewhere, not just to make a statement but also, frankly, because it was clear it wasn't a safe destination for sexual vacationers. Some locals wrote me a few stern notes about how wrong this was, to target the city because of some bad policies local business owners didn't agree with. Well, "deja vu all over again" because here we are right back where we started: calling for the boycott of Fort Lauderdale though this time we would broaden the call to include not just men who cruise for sex, but all freedom loving citizens.

The reason this time remains virtually the same: city policies and city politicians that should make all of us re-consider whether we should spend our time and our money in a place that doesn't really seem to appreciate who we are and why we go there on vacation. This week the Mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Jim Naugle, basically said he doesn't really want us to visit his city, something he stated at a news conference on the steps of City Hall, the same news conference where he announced he had just been made aware of a website called Cruising for Sex. The Mayor announced that AIDS was being spread by men engaging in sex in local toilets and that tourists were adding to the problem. He suggested the county tourism dollars should no longer be used to promote the region to gay men since, of course, they bring disease with them.

This all started a few weeks back when Naugle announced the city needed self-cleaning public toilets not because the citizens could benefit from them for the obvious reasons, but in order that homosexuals would stop having sex in the toilets. Local media uncovered the fact that police records listed one arrest for toilet sex in the last three years and local cops were quoted saying this was not a problem.

For those who think he is simply anti-sex, Naugle apparently also refuses to call gay people "gay" because he says there is nothing happy about being gay. Still not enough to convince you? Try these tidbits cited at Wikipedia:

Naugle has said that the American Civil Liberties Union acronym ACLU means "Atheists and Criminal Lobbying Union" and that a proposal for reducing greenhouse gases was "hate-America stuff" concocted by "a bunch of scientists meeting in Paris who've had too much wine." His views regarding homosexuality are that sodomy laws should be enforced and that homosexuality is a sin.

So why punish Fort Lauderdale because of one idiot politician? Well, this idiot has been re-elected every term since 1991, making him the longest serving Mayor in the history of Fort Lauderdale which would seem to indicate the locals have already made up their minds. Maybe now it is time for the rest of us to decide we're not going to spend our vacation dollars here.

According to an article in the Chicago Sun-Times, gay people spend $64 billion dollars on travel money per year so clearly our dollars can help (or hurt if withdrawn) a local economy. Planet Out named Fort Lauderdale "Best Gay Resort Town" in 2006. Travel writer Andrew Collins says Fort Lauderdale is "Florida's leading gay vacation destination." Even the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau spins this one, citing the city as "America's top gay resort area." Clearly the city of Fort Lauderdale is sending very mixed signals and it is time for a consensus to be reached, but until then we advise no more trips to Fort Lauderdale. The world is full of options for a sunny holiday and thus we urge all sex loving, ACLU supportive, environmentally concerned, gay, bi and straight persons to look elsewhere until things change politically in Fort Lauderdale.