2nd gay activist group approved to march in New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade
The New York
City Saint Patrick’s Day Parade has announced that it is allowing a second
pro-homosexual group to participate in the event. Meanwhile, a commitment from
parade organizers to allow a pro-life group in the parade remains unfulfilled.
LGBT group
Lavender and Green Alliance will march in the 2016 St. Patrick’s Parade,
joining Out@NBCUniversal, the result of a September 28
vote by the parade board of directors, according to the Wall Street
Journal.
Lavender and
Green Alliance’s tag line states that it has been, “celebrating Irish Lesbian,
Gay, bisexual and Transgender culture and identity since 1994.”
Homosexual
groups lauded the parade’s decision as a triumph.
“We Won!”
declared the headline of a press release from Irish
Queers the day after the second group was approved. A
spokesperson for the group called the decision “a total victory.”
The president
of the pro-life group whose parade application has been rejected had a
different reaction.
“It is now a
gay parade and no longer a Catholic parade,” said Elizabeth Rex, of
Children First Foundation (CFF).
The NBC group
made headlines this past March as the first-ever homosexual group to march with
an identifying banner in the event’s 250-plus-year history. Parade organizers
had announced their decision to let the group march in September of last year.
Permitting
Out@NBCUniversal to march with its homosexual banner, was a “gesture of
goodwill” toward the LGBT community, parade organizers said. But they said the
policy change would also ensure the inclusion of a pro-life group.
However the
committee backed out of its pledge to include a pro-life
group, causing the Catholic League, which had been part of orchestrating the
deal to also include a pro-life group, to pull out
of the parade after years of
participation.
There were
reports that pressure to allow NBC’s homosexual activist group to march came in
the midst of the impending expiration of the Parade’s contract with NBC to
broadcast the parade.
The pro-life
CFF had applied to march just after the policy change was announced last year.
CFF repeatedly attempted to communicate with parade organizers, and it was only
after the group sent legal notice that it received an official denial from the
parade.
Rex told
LifeSiteNews that so far no pro-life group she knows of has applied or been
selected to march in 2016.
“It's time to
choose: God or mammon?” Rex told LifeSiteNews. “The parade is now a
joke.”
The
archbishop of New York generally celebrates Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral
just before the parade’s kickoff, and then views the parade from the cathedral
steps.
This year
Cardinal Dolan served as grand
marshal as well, and defended
the parade committee’s decision to allow the
homosexual group to march.
Catholics were upset by the cardinal’s
stance, arguing it would be used by the media to portray the Catholic Church as
accepting of the homosexual lifestyle.
The Catholic
Church teaches that homosexual persons should not be discriminated against. But
it also teaches that homosexual tendencies, while not sinful, are intrinsically
disordered, and that homosexual acts are gravely sinful and endanger a person’s
eternal life.
An
overwhelming majority of the parade’s 18-member board supported Lavender and
Green Alliance’s application to participate, according to Chairman John Lahey.
“We’re
hopeful those who thought we didn’t go far enough in 2015 will feel more
satisfied,” Lahey said. “We don’t want the false impression that we
discriminate.”
Lavender and
Green Alliance chairman and co-founder Brendan Fay said he was happy after
he got the call from Lahey the night of the vote.
“This is a
breakthrough. It’s a marvelous moment,” Fay said. “My thoughts went back over
25 years and I thought of many people who had fought, protested, stood up for
this very moment.”
Former State
Senator Tom Duane, who has been arrested several times protesting the
parade’s prior ban on allowing homosexual groups, said the vote approving
Lavender and Green Alliance is “a good sign of even more good things to come.”
Various
pro-homosexual activists and politicians weren’t satisfied with just one
homosexual group marching this year, with Mayor Bill de Blasio boycotting for
this reason. It’s not known if the mayor will participate in 2016.
Some
activists still want more than two groups in the parade, but will take the
victory for now.
“Is
everything absolutely perfect? It never is,” said longtime gay activist Allen
Roskoff. “But this is major. A lot of us put a lot of blood, sweat and tears
into this and it just goes to show that times are changing. We’re very happy.”
Catholic
League President Bill Donahue condemned the board’s move.
“It’s
contemptible. It’s become a circus. I will never march with them again,”
Donohue said. “They should no longer be able to call it the St. Patrick’s Day
Parade.”
Rex told
LifeSiteNews she believed that if the parade committee were to let her pro-life
group march, it would likely result in pro-abortion protests and another public
relations disaster for the parade, or CFF would be allowed in only to justify
permitting abortion groups to march. Either way, the parade committee has
failed to keep politics out of the parade.
“So,” she
said, “I will not march, Bill Donohue will not march, and I would recommend
that every single faithful Catholic group NOT march in 2016.”