In Arkansas, Gay Rights Ordinance Highlights Clash Between Two Faces of Tourism - NYTimes.com

Today is the day,,,

Local conservatives mounted a challenge of their own, effectively forcing the Council to put the measure on a May 12 ballot.

Opponents of the ordinance are optimistic, noting that voters rejected similar measures in nearby Fayetteville, Ark., and Springfield, Mo. But the Eureka Springs campaign has been tailored to local concerns, focusing on tourism. It is the city’s only substantial industry since the 19th century, when Americans flocked here in the belief that the water held special healing properties.

“If you think tourists are going to be excited about even the possibility that their wives, daughters and girlfriends will be sharing a bathroom with a guy who decides he’s ‘transgender’ just to have a little fun (or worse) at the ladies’ expense, you don’t know tourists and you don’t know sex offenders,” one newspaper ad read.

At the same time, a website promoting gay tourism, Out in Eureka, has already begun incorporating the Council’s passage of the ordinance into its argument that the city is “the antithesis of the redneck stereotype” and a “microcosm of San Francisco.” Gay travelers, it says, can feel at home along with “all manner of colorful characters, misfits, eccentrics and rugged individualists.”

On the tiny twisting streets of downtown, some shopkeepers say they are wary of taking a stand for fear of losing business.

On the tiny twisting streets of downtown, some shopkeepers say they are wary of taking a stand for fear of losing business.

A local ministers’ association refused to allow some Methodist church members to march in the Easter parade, for fear that they would display a banner that could be interpreted as pro-gay. Two Chamber of Commerce board members resigned in protest after the chamber issued a statement opposing the ordinance.

In Arkansas, Gay Rights Ordinance Highlights Clash Between Two Faces of Tourism - NYTimes.com