Politicians, who generally avoid street fairs, flock to the Jackson Heights Gay Pride Festival and Parade held in Queens each year on the first Sunday in June.

The polyglot nature of Jackson Heights makes the festival cosmopolitan, and the gay theme makes it trendy. Mayor Bloomberg, Comptroller William Thompson Jr., the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, and Rep. Joe Crowley are among the many who plan to attend.

Planned in 1911 as a restricted community barring Jews and Catholics, Jackson Heights is now anything but restrictive. With 167 nationalities living in Queens and 116 languages spoken there, the borough is the most diverse county in America, and Jackson Heights is its most diverse neighborhood. But the old ways died hard. “It took a murder of a gay man and a homophobic district school board president to galvanize the Queens gay community,” the openly gay Democratic district leader of Jackson Heights, Daniel Dromm, said.

Mr. Dromm was referring to the 1990 murder of Julio Rivera by three members of the Doc Martens Gang. The gang, named after the Dr. Martens boots they wore, was an avowed Nazi, skinhead group. “In his own testimony, one of the three killers told how they ‘went hunting’ for a gay man or Jew to bash,” Mr. Dromm said. “They lurked in a van on 37th Road behind where many of the gay bars were and waited. When Julio came by, they struck him in the head with a full 40 ounce bottle of beer and continued to kick and beat him to death.”

He continued: “The Julio Rivera murder raised consciousness, but in 1992 the fight over the Children of the Rainbow curriculum got us organized. Many gays felt education was the only way to end gay bashing. The curriculum did not promote gayness; it just didn’t demonize it.”

However, not all in Queens agreed. “When the Queens, District 24 school board president led the fight to have the curriculum removed from all city schools just two years after Julio’s murder, we had to do something. We organized, got active, and never looked back,” Mr. Dromm said.

If the Jackson Heights Gay Pride Parade is an obvious example of the neighborhood’s acceptance of gays, the inclusion of gay rights on the political radar screen is a more subtle illustration of neighborhood gay influence. This is reflected in the numerous elected officials who flock to attend this parade. Last year Mr. Crowley was the grand marshal.

“Queens is amazingly diverse,” he said. “Amongst all that diversity, Jackson Heights is singular in that it is the second largest gay community in New York. This adds to the character of the neighborhood.”

Attitudes toward gays in Queens have changed. “The elimination of gay tolerant school curricula citywide started in Queens in 1992,” Mr. Dromm said. “That could not happen today.”

Mr. Crowley agrees. “Things are much more open now than in the past,” he said.