Gays accused of discrimination in US resort village

PROVINCETOWN, Mass, July 21 (Reuters) Provincetown, New England's summer gay capital, is facing a rise in harassment and discrimination. But this time it's straight people who say they are being ridiculed as ''breeders'' and ''baby makers.'' Less than a decade after a successful campaign to end violent paroxysms of ''gay bashing'' in the beach town at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, police and town officials report a resurgence in tension between gays and straight people.

Police Chief Ted Meyer said straight people complained of being called ''breeders'' over the July Fourth holiday weekend, and that in one serious incident a man was charged with assaulting a woman who signed a petition to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, the only state where it is legal.

Equally troubling, he said, Jamaican workers in Provincetown say they have been the target of racial slurs.

''It's been a series of issues,'' Meyer said.

The flare-ups in a town that overflows in summer with a colourful mix of gay couples often openly holding hands or kissing, cross-dressers and flocks of curious tourists coincide with a planned vote this year in the state Legislature on an amendment to ban gay marriage -- a measure that has rallied activists on both sides of the issue.

Gay-marriage advocates have set up a Web site -- www.knowthyneighbor.org -- that publishes the names of people who have signed the petition, including at least two locals in Provincetown who say they have been singled out and verbally abused by gays since their names appeared on the Web site.

Town officials said the town is struggling to strike a balance between protecting the right to freedom of expression for petition signers, and ensuring its gay majority contain their anger at what many see as an assault on their hard-won right to marriage.

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