We're Catchcing Up,,,To Boston

Hey, we're catching up!

By "we", I mean my hometown, the City of New York.  We're supposed to lead, but on some matters we've actually been following in the tracks of--or not even on the same road as--some other cities, namely Boston.

The other day, LGBT Irish groups marched for the very first time in Beantown's St. Patrick's Parade.  Joining them was Martin J. Walsh, the city's first mayor in two decades to walk the South Boston parade route in two decades.

Last year, Walsh tried, unsucessfully, to persuade South Boston Allied War Veterans, the group that organizes the parade, to allow an LGBT group to march.  Finally, two weeks ago, they relented and invited OUTVETS, a group of LGBT veterans of the Armed Forces.

Now an LGBT group will march down Fifth Avenue along with various organizations representing Catholics, police officers, firefighters and others.  Last fall, parade organizers announced the invitation of OUT@NBCUniversal, an employee resource group affiliated with NBC's parent company (which broadcasts the parade) to participate in the oldest and largest St. Patrick's celebration in the US.

But, unlike Walsh, New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio will not participate in his home burg's parade.  He is still not satisfied with the level of LGBT inclusion in the parade.  However, beer-maker Guinness, which withdrew its longtime sponsorship of the parade last year, has decided to recommit itself.  

De Blasio, for his part, participated in the St. Pat's for All parade--which lives up to its title by not excluding anybody--earlier this month where, not surprisingly, he was warmly received.  

The Mayor Boycotts, But Do We Need To Be Included?

Today New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

How can that be?, you ask.  St. Paddy’s Day is two weeks away and, didn’t he say he wasn’t going to march?  

He did indeed say he wouldn’t participate in the one that will proceed down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on the 17^th.  Also, the City Council won’t send its traditional contagion, although the Council speaker said individual members are free to participate as individual citizens, not as representatives of the Council.

But today there was an “inclusive” St. Patrick’s Day Parade that proceeds through such Queens neighborhoods as  Sunnyside and Woodside (traditional Irish enclaves) and neighboring Jackson Heights, which is said to contain the largest LGBT community outside of Chelsea.

There was also another parade in Staten Island today.  But the Mayor skipped that one because, unlike the one in Queens, it excludes openly LGBT marchers and groups.

While I applaud the Mayor’s and Council’s actions, I still have to wonder why, exactly, LGBT groups are so concerned with being part of a parade that, frankly, doesn’t show Irish culture and heritage, or this city, at its best.  I have gone to the parade several times, the last time eleven years ago.  I had just begun to take hormones then, so their effects weren’t visible to anyone who hadn’t seen me before I started to take them. In other words, I viewed the parade as someone who was, to all appearances (as if anyone noticed) a guy in his 40’s or thereabouts.  

To tell you the truth, the only person with whom I interacted in that sea of shelaleighs was a friend who knew about my transition.  I didn’t make any effort to start or maintain a conversation with anyone else; I don’t particularly enjoy parades or vast seas of humanity, so I wasn’t in a particularly festive mood.  

Someone might say I don’t appreciate the parade because I’m not Irish.  Perhaps that’s true.  But to me, the mass gathering seemed to be little more than an occasion for a lot of drinking and more than a little loutishness.  About the only time I responded to the parade itself was when the Fire Department’s contagion passed by:  It was only a year and half after 11 September 2001, so I shared reverence almost everyone else in the crowd expressed for the firefighters, who lost so many of their colleagues that day.

I think that LGBT groups—and we, as individuals—can direct our energies to much more important issues than whether a few groups with greatly exaggerated ideas (that, at times, border on unintentional parody) about their heritage will allow us to march in their parade.   

Mayor And City Council Boycotting St. Patrick's Day Parade

Yesterday, New York City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverto announced that the Council will not officially participate in this year's St. Patrick's Day Parade.  Individual council members are free to march on their own, or with other groups, but they cannot do so as Council representatives.

The reason? I'll let Ms. Mark-Viverto tell it in her own words:   "The St. Patrick’s Parade should be a time when all New Yorkers can come together and march openly as who they are—but right now that is not the case for the LGBT community."

In other words, she is protesting the fact that LGBT people and organizations are not allowed to participate.  This is a move even her openly-lesbian predecessor, Christine Quinn, did not make.  One reason for that, I believe, is that Quinn was first and foremost an ally of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who never would have boycotted the parade or encouraged anyone else to do so.  On the other hand, Mark-Viverto not only has her own convictions but the support of current Mayor Bill De Blasio, who is also boycotting the parade in sympathy.

Of course, those who oppose the boycott are using the reactionary tactic du jour:  Accusing those they are trying to exclude of being, well, exclusivist and bigoted.  It's best summed up in a statement from the Catholic League's Bill Donohue:  

"There is a growing contempt for tolerance and diversity in the homosexual community, and among their supporters, especially in New York... The protesters obviously loathe diversity: diversity means pluralism, a wholesale rejection of mandated, one-size-fits-all policies. What these activists want is the right to impose their agenda on Irish Catholics, neutering a day set aside to honor St. Patrick."

Excuse me...Who is trying to impose an "agenda" on whom? Who is trying to "neuter" what?  I know of no LGBT person who is trying to impose his or her "agenda", whatever it may be, on anyone else.  And, as someone who's marched in a few parades,  I don't see how a desire to participate in the St. Patrick's Day procession is an attempt to "neuter" a celebration.  

Say whatever else you will about De Blasio or Mark-Viverto, they actually seem to understand what diversity and inclusion are. Good for them!