St Patrick's day parade or charade? Irish Americans divided on gay rights

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/st-patricks-day-parade-irish-gay-rights

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As a child in an Irish-American family that had moved to the bedroom communities of New York, as so many Irish-American New Yorkers have over the years, going back to the city for the St Patrick’s Day Parade was an event on par with the World Series. Even as big as Christmas.

My great-grandparents came over from County Clare in the 1890s. Living in Brooklyn and Manhattan, they maintained an Irish pub in Greenwich Village from 1906 to the 1970s. For many years “the parade”, as it was known, was a way for us to be Irish again. We were no strangers to dabbing tears off our faces when the pipes sang in the air and the marchers approached Fifth Avenue.

For us, Ireland was a place that needed our help in my great-grandparents’ time, and they thrived when assisting new Irish immigrants to settle with the the help of organizations they were involved in, such as the County Claremen’s Evicted Tenants Protective and Industrial Association.

My family was, and has always been, torn. Parts of it are liberal, other parts conservative – with no one in between. So goes the Irish.

And when it comes to the St Patrick’s Day parade, the debate is no less polemical. The liberal side sees the parade’s backers and organizers as coming from an older generation of conservatives and Catholics that are behind the times. Some argue that the parade is not at all about being Irish or Irish-American any more, beyond the shamrocks and green beer, but is better described as a Roman Catholic procession.

“It should be called the Catholic’s Day Parade,” explains Malachy McCourt, an Irish writer, actor and New York City celebrity since the 1950s. “But I prefer to call it the St Patrick’s Day charade.”

The refusal to allow LGBT groups with their own banners came to a head last year when the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, boycotted the parade. Two major sponsors, Guinness and Heineken, withdrew as well. Under pressure and bad public relations, New York City’s St Patrick’s Day Parade Inc organizers have made changes this year, albeit slight.

NBC’s local affiliate, which has televised the parade since the 1990s, never confirmed that it had threatened to drop coverage over the issue of gay participation, but this year there has been an inclusion of one LGBT banner. The problem? The one group allowed is that of NBC’s own employees in OUT@NBCUniversal.

While recently attending the St Patrick’s Day parade in Sunnyside, Queens, which describes its purpose as welcoming “all to celebrate Irish heritage and culture regardless of race, gender, creed or sexual orientation,” De Blasio was quoted as saying: “I’m not ready to commit to marching, because all we’ve heard is that one delegation related to NBC will be allowed to have members of the LGBT community in it … obviously a pretty narrow concession, and I think we’d like to see something that’s more inclusive.”

Emmaia Gelman of Irish Queers, an LGBT group in New York that has organized protests against the parade for many years, explains: “Money talks. It wasn’t until the sponsors and NBC pressured them that they made a back-room deal to include NBC’s employees, who are not even an Irish LGBT group.”

It is, however, a step toward change, albeit a small one (in Boston last Sunday, two major LGBT groups were allowed to march – OutVets and Boston Pride). But these steps seem to underscore just how out-of-step the organizing committee is. John L Lahey, vice-chairman of the parade committee, has acknowledged the economic impact of losing sponsors, the many years of activism and bad press.

n an interview on the Adrian Flannelly Show on Irish Radio, Lahey said he and the committee decided that they “really needed to get on a path that can resolve this issue.”

Shocking many in the Roman Catholic community, Pope Francis recently said: “Who am I to judge?” when asked about sexual orientation. In Ireland, gay people are allowed to march openly in St Patrick’s Day parades. Even Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Dolan, this year’s Grand Marshal, has said, “people with same-sex attraction are God’s children, deserving dignity and respect, never to be treated with discrimination or injustice.”

This is encouraging, and all I have to do is look at my own family for a comparison. I know that my great-grandparents and grandparents would not have been in favor of LGBT people in the parade. My parents, however, were much more open to it. So, if the times are changing, then how is it that the organizing committee could still be caught in a vacuum?

The question can partially be understood by looking to the past. Irish immigrants came to New York in great numbers after the the Great Hunger of the 1840s, and continued coming until the first world war. Impoverished and desperate, many sought solid footing in the American economy as policemen, firemen and city employees.

This workforce was polemicized by two major aspects: pulled to the left through the unions they organized, while remaining religiously conservative through the Roman Catholic church. But over time, these Irish-American groupings have become increasingly conservative, even as they move further and further away from the city itself. And those who organize the parade, generally speaking, are conservatives who now live in the suburbs.

This has created a vacuum where those in charge are sticking to the doctrines of the Catholic church, rather than allowing the influence of the younger, more urban generation that is generally much more accepting of the LGBT community.

For Ms Gelman and many other groups protesting the parade, even though a concession has been given, there is an easy solution. “Why not have a Catholic parade? Because the St Patrick’s Day Parade should be a day to celebrate all Irish-American communities, including Irish-Americans that happen to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.”

In the meantime, Brendan Fay, a gay Irishman and longtime protester of the St Patrick’s Day Parade in New York, will be wearing a green carnation in honor of Oscar Wilde, who was charged and sentenced to hard labor for “gross indecency” with other men.

“Our struggle has been a long one and although we appreciate the progress, all LGBT people deserve to be inside, not outside of the parade.”

Emails and phone calls to the NYC St Patrick’s Day Parade Inc and the communications department of the Archdiocese of New York were not returned by time of publication.