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St. Patrick's Day Parade Will Finally Welcome Gay Group With Banners
By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 3, 2014
Modified Sep 3, 2014
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Camille Lawhead / Gothamist
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By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 3, 2014
Modified Sep 3, 2014
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The St. Patrick's Day Parade has banned groups identifying themselves as LGBT for years, prompting Mayor de Blasio and some City Council members to boycott the event. But now the parade's organizers say they are allowing a LGBT group to march in the 2015 parade.
The parade committee, in a statement made available to The Associated Press, said on Wednesday that OUT@NBCUniversal, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender support group at the company that broadcasts the parade, would be marching up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue on March 17 under an identifying banner.
It’s unclear how the group was chosen: whether OUT@NBCUniversal, which is described on its website as “the affinity group for LGBT & Straight Ally employees at NBCUniversal,” was invited by the organizers or applied. Parade directors voted unanimously to include the group, the statement said.
A parade spokesperson said other gay groups can apply to march in the parade in the future. The move may help the parade win back some sponsors, like Guinness, which dropped out of the parade due its previous stance. Still, the parade's organizers blamed activists, "Organizers have diligently worked to keep politics — of any kind — out of the parade in order to preserve it as a single and unified cultural event. Paradoxically, that ended up politicizing the parade."
Earlier this year, Hilary Beirne, of the NYC St. Patricks' Day Parade organization, told the Wall Street Journal that the parade isn't discriminatory and that it is a "celebration of Irish heritage and culture—nothing more, nothing less." Beirne said gays and lesbians can march—they just can't identify themselves as gay with signs. Beirne said, "There's another parade in New York City that celebrates being gay and being lesbian, and that's the Gay Pride Parade. Our parade is specifically for a celebration of our Irish heritage and our culture."
During this year's march, protestors along the parade route shouted, "We're Irish, we're queer, we have the right to be here!" and "Why can't queers march in New York? Queers can march in Dublin, why not in New York?"
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gay rights
lgbt
st. patrick's day
st. patrick's day parade
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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