Rep. blames fear for solicitation charge

Advocate.com reports that Florida state Rep. Bob Allen (R-32nd Dist.) is claiming that fear made him perform the actions that led to a charge of solicitation to commit prostitution.

Allen was arrested July 11 in a Titusville, Fla., public park restroom after police allege he offered the undercover officer $20 to let him perform oral sex.

Allen, 48, told police that he was intimidated into offering sex.

“I certainly wasn’t there to have sex with anybody and certainly wasn’t there to exchange money for it,” he said. “This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park.”

Allen said he feared he “was about to be a statistic.”

Allen has claimed innocence and said he will not resign from the legislature. His arraignment date is Aug. 23.

Allen was one of 21 Florida legislators to sign Gov. Jeb Bush’s friend-of-the-court brief supporting the state’s ban on gays adopting children.

Gay gamer site hacked

Pinknews.co.uk reports that GayGamer.net, a gay newsgathering games Web site, was recently flooded with threatening homophobic e-mails and death threats from an anonymous hacker.

Flynn de Marco, the site’s owner, said that service attacks had started on the morning of Aug. 1, and by Aug. 3 the site was able to block the IP addresses where the attacks seemed to be coming from. Later that day, someone began flooding the site’s forums with hate speech and death threats.

The flood of messages all originated from the same IP in Philadelphia, de Marco said.

GayGamer.net is currently back up and running.

Firefighters to sue over Pride appearance

365gay.com reports that four San Diego firefighters are seeking to file a lawsuit after claiming they were forced to take part in the city’s gay pride parade.

The four are claiming they followed the order by their battalion chief to ride in the July 21 parade, fearing they would be suspended or punished if they refused.

A spokesperson for the fire department said that the men were assigned to the parade at the last minute because the volunteer participants backed out when one of them had a family crisis, and that the four worked in a fire station near the parade route.

— Larry Nichols