By SAM DOLNICK

In New York’s toughest neighborhoods, gay residents say, it is possible to live openly much of the time ? and then to suddenly pay . The recent torture of three men thought to be gay has shaken the city, especially in the Bronx, the borough with some of the city’s most violent crime, where the attack took place.

“There is a constant threat of violence that we live with,” said Charles Rice-Gonzalez, 46, a writer and gay rights advocate who has been working in the South Bronx for two decades. “I was horrified, disgusted and angered by the attacks.

I wouldn’t say I was surprised or shocked.” Since the arrests of 11 gang members in the assaults (three have since been released), Mr. Rice-Gonzalez and Arthur Aviles, founders of the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, have begun planning a self-defense class . Keith Mitchell, a 24-year-old gay man who said he can be himself in his neighborhood because people there watched him grow up, is taking care when straying beyond its borders.

He has been beaten up himself, he said, and the recent attacks are never far from his mind. “That could have been me,” he said. “You never know when someone is going to turn on you.” In many respects, gay people in poor neighborhoods face the same challenges and threats as other gay New Yorkers.

The Department of Education reported 862 incidents of harassment based on sexual orientation in the 2008-9 school year. More than 40 percent of the 1,700 homeless youths in the Safe Horizon Streetwork Project, a citywide victims’ assistance program, identify themselves as gay or transgender.

But in dozens of interviews, gay and lesbian residents said it could be especially difficult to be gay in the Bronx, given the macho street culture, the local gang codes and the storefront churches that call homosexuality a sin.

The Bronx does have its public gay life. Some bars sponsor gay nights , but the scene is scattered, without the security that an enclave like Chelsea or the West Village, both in Manhattan, provides.

When Mr. Rice-Gonzalez was growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s, there were few gay organizations, making for “a very clear sense of isolation,” he said. “There was no way for gay men to meet each other unless you ran into someone downtown,” said Mr. Rice-Gonzalez, whose theater serves as a gathering place for gays. Today, several groups in the neighborhood offer gay people services and counseling.

Harassment and even violence against gays are not uncommon, but the October 3 attacks in the Bronx have struck a nerve because of their brutality and extent - 11 suspects; 4 victims; and a 20-hour rampage involving cigarette burns, sodomy and beatings with baseball bats. Ruben Porras, 29, who grew up near where the attacks took place and said he knew some of the men who were arrested, offered an explanation. He said the men, who belonged to a gang, were not overtly hostile to gays. He compared the gang to a father who tolerated gay people ? as long as they were not in his family.

“People will embrace it so long as it’s not someone they are claiming as their own,” he said. The trouble began, the authorities said, after one gang member saw a 30-year-old man, who was suspected of being gay, with a 17-year-old who wanted to join the group. Gang members assumed the men had slept together; they punished them, another teenager and the older man’s brother.

Morris Heights, where the attacks occurred, is a tight-knit community where neighbors know one another. Old men stand in bars discussing the day’s headlines. A 29-year-old mother stood outside a bodega recently .

She said she was horrified by the violence, but acknowledged that gay people made her uncomfortable. “It’s hard for me to handle,” said the woman, who declined to give her name for fear of gang reprisals. “It’s something that’s not normal.” In neighborhoods where gangs are common, some churches preach tolerance. But several gay residents said a growing number of congregations made them feel attacked from two sides.

“I feel assaulted every weekend because of the hate speech from sidewalk preachers,” Mr. Rice-Gonzalez said. “They say gay people need to repent, they’re going to hell.” New York has long been a refuge for gay people. But recent events, like an assault on a gay man in Greenwich Village, followed by the Bronx attacks, have left many people dismayed.

“If this is the oasis in our country,” said Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, “it doesn’t feel that great right now.”