On the iconic stretch of Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, creativity, culture, and community intersect at the Friendship Center Gallery, founded by Stacy and Ely BenHayon. Located at 1406 E. Las Olas Blvd., the gallery has quickly emerged as a unique destination where contemporary art and meaningful community engagement come together.

When church and state overlap, brutality follows, and justice bends with the whip. Blurred lines between religion and government produced the Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials, the Crusades, the Huguenot persecutions, and the brutality campaigns of the Holy Roman Empire, to list an easy few, all featuring sadism, torture, and bloodlust in the name of religion.

When regimes crack, history reminds us that the fault lines are never only political — they are profoundly human. For LGBTQ people living under authoritarian rule, a regime change is not an abstract geopolitical event. It can mean the difference between fear and freedom, between invisibility and dignity, between life and death.

There are moments in history when silence becomes complicated. We believe we are living in one of those moments now.