03.17.06
N.Y. St. Pat’s parade leader compares gays to neo-Nazis, KKK, prostitutes
Lesbian Council speaker boycotts
but mayor marches
NEW YORK (AP) | Mar 17, 12:38 PM
The chair of the nation’s biggest St. Patrick’s Day Parade marched Friday while sidestepping questions about remarks comparing gay Irish-American activists to neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and prostitutes.
“Today is St. Patrick’s Day. We celebrate our faith and heritage. Everything else is secondary,” said the chair, John Dunleavy, who wore a sash of the Irish colors.
Dunleavy was blasted by the City Council’s first openly gay leader for the remarks, which appeared in The Irish Times on Thursday.
He told the newspaper, “If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow Neo-Nazis into their parade? If African Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?”
About the Irish Lesbian & Gay Organization, Dunleavy said, “People have rights. If we let the ILGO in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?”
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is of Irish descent, said she didn’t think Dunleavy’s remarks were worth a response. She declined to participate in the Fifth Avenue parade after organizers barred an Irish gay and lesbian group for a 16th straight year.
Huge crowds lined the streets at the start of the parade, waving Irish flags, wearing green hats and carnations and painting clovers on their faces. The city’s parade, with 150,000 marchers and up to 2 million spectators, is the nation’s oldest and largest St. Patrick Day parade.
New York “is the kernel of the whole Irish community in the U.S.,” said Joe Sanning, 52, an officer with the Ireland National Police Service in Tipparery, Ireland. “We don’t have parades like this at home.
Spectator Mary Sweeney, who moved to New York from Ireland 15 years ago with her two daughters, said, “I want them to grow up knowing their Irish heritage. Everyone wants to be Irish today.”
Still, Dunleavy’s comments drew protests at Friday’s parade.
“The comments bring to the forefront a longstanding bigotry, and the bigotry often translates into violence in our communities,” said graduate student Emmaia Gelman, 31. She was among a dozen demonstrators organized by a group called Irish Queers, who hoisted a sign that read, “Troops Out, Queers in,” a reference to military groups participating in the parade.
Efforts to let Irish gays march under their own banner date to 1991, when an ILGO application was first rejected by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the group that organizes the parade. Instead, 35 ILGO members were sprayed with beer and insults as they marched with a Manhattan division of the Hibernians and then-Mayor David Dinkins. It was the group’s last parade appearance.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who marched in Friday’s parade, declined to comment on the dispute, although he had earlier urged the Hibernians to change their stance.
“I’ve always believed this is a city where all the parades should be open to everybody, and orientation, gender … should not be the deciding thing,” he said.
The mayor marched earlier this month in an inclusive St. Patrick’s parade in Queens.