The Injustice of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade: A Postmortem
By Michael Boyajian
There was a time that although I am not Irish I would exuberantly celebrate the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York. With spirits high from the pending arrival of Spring I would wear green, work the governor’s brunch before the parade, watch the parade with my wife up by the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we would enjoy a fine lunch of corn beef and cabbage followed that very evening by another meal of corn beef and cabbage. All day I would get choked up by the passing bag pipers and elderly Irishmen would come up to my wife and say she had the map of Ireland on her face.
But these days I am saddened when I watch the parade. I don’t see 150,000 happy and smiling Irish Americans. I see 150,000 homophobes marching down Fifth Avenue. You see in Ireland Gays are treated equally yet across the ocean in New York they are second class citizens when it comes to the parade because to this day Gay Irish groups are forbidden from marching in the parade under their own banner.
A funny thing when you think about it because New York is a Gay capital with a progressive City Council and a friendly pro Gay media. But because organizers are considered a private group they can keep out groups they don’t want in.
Sure they’ll claim that there is a waiting list to march but that is just a pretext for discrimination that is especially striking when you consider that the parade route is along a public avenue, protected by public police and first responders and marched in by all manner of elected officials. Yes, your tax dollars contribute to the cost of operating the parade. In my eyes that, makes the parade a public event sponsored by none other than you and me and certainly not a private parade.
But the problem is this, city merchants depend on parade crowds for a large part of their annual profits and that is the crux of the problem. Because of the financial advantage of the parade elected officials are willing to look away from this discrimination. Big bucks rule the roost and no one wants to risk shuddering the parade and so to hell with equality. So it is OK to have thousands of under the drinking age kids rolling into the parade drunk before 10AM but God forbid you allow a handful of Gays march under their own banner.
It makes you wonder how such a joyous event can have such an ugly face and begs to ask why those with so much happiness can deny others equal access to a share of that happiness.
End