When the incredibly successful Gay Days Orlando decided to expand the franchise this year to include Fort Lauderdale, it could have selected any weekend in the last six months of 2014. And at last count, there were 26 of them. But Gay Days Fort Lauderdale did not select just any week in the last 26. They selected Thanksgiving 2014–Nov. 25 though Dec. 1.

The powers that be are already attempting to label the days, “The Gay and Lesbian Experience of a Lifetime.” Now that may be a bit of a stretch, for, lest you forget, the LGBT community already has plans for that weekend—just as they have had for the past 30 years. It’s the White Party. Yes, the venerable White Party that is the primary fundraiser for Care Resource, South Florida’s oldest and largest non-profit HIV/AIDS service organization.

Every year, tens of thousands of circuit boys, muscle boys, daddies, bears, lesbians and their fans, pour into South Beach in an annual rite of passage that’s as predictable as the swallows coming back to Capistrano. So when Care Resource’s Chief Executive Officer Rick Siclari heard the news that Gay Days president Chris Alexander-Manley had decided to attempt to piggy-back his very-for-profit Gay Days, wrapping it like a fancy hors d’oeuvres around the same weekend as the White Party, he was noticeably upset.

In a letter that Siclari wrote to Alexander-Manley, and obtained by the Agenda, he was seemingly in control and understated. “Although we are happy that Gay Days is expanding into South Florida,” Siclari wrote, “we are disappointed about your choice of dates….as this is another time our community suffers from someone arriving in town and capitalizing off what our not-for-profit agency has spent years building to benefit our HIV positive community.”

With obvious restraint, Siclari continued, “We are saddened by the non-inclusiveness of the South Florida LGBT business and nonprofit community in determining your event dates.” Obviously, the date selection was not accidental, but was determined by the preannounced White Party dates and calculated to put the most money into private enterprise as possible.

Since the LGBT community is a finite group, with only so many resources and play dates available each year to comb out the extensions, dry clean the thong, and x-out the calendar for partying hardily, there can be no misinterpretation of what Gay Days is up to. Divide and conquer—or die trying.

Naturally, there will be those party boys that will toss off the old and welcome in the new to see that the fresh kids are going to bring to the table. Gay Days has already announced its host hotel will be the uber-chic W, which as the flagship of the Starwood Collection, obviously has no clue that it’s now looked upon by some as part of the greedy corporate arena trying to make a quick buck off the pain and suffering of the ill and needy.

“White Party is not about business enterprise,” Siclari wrote. “It’s about people, friends, those we care for, and those whose memories we will continue to honor, by helping those we still can.”

At press time, neither Alexander-Manley nor Siclari had returned phone messages for comment. When Gay Days expanded last year to Las Vegas for the first time, it attracted 30,000 of LGBT’s richest and finest to throw down a party on the Strip in the Entertainment Capital of the World.

It will be interesting to see what side those same gays and their friends pick this coming Thanksgiving. These men and women are rich, intelligent and characteristically unfaithful. One thing they are not are fools. A party is one thing. A party for charity is another. Get out your armor and the good long nails.  You’re going to need it for this war—for it’s already begun!