Loving and loathing in Las Vegas: gays and lesbians are streaming into Vegas to start new lives. But are they really happy with what they find?

"In one of my first jobs here, I would hear [antigay] comments from people," says Fontenot. "I'd hear that stuff more at work here than back in Louisiana. And it was from people who live here, not tourists."

Fontenot says he's had zero problems at his current job and insists the city is a much different place than when he moved here. "It's not as bad as it was four years ago," he says. "Four years can really make a difference." In no other place in America is that truer than Las Vegas, a city growing like an adolescent on steroids. Presumably, Las Vegas 2012 wilt look and feel vastly different from Vegas 2008--due in no small part to the thousands of gays moving in. For people like Groth, Las Vegas remains a place of opportunity; it is, he says, the "kind of place where the American Dream can still be had."

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