Second Gay Group to March in NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade [2016]

The organizers of New York City's St. Patrick's Day parade have announced the approval of another "gay rights" group to participate in next year's march through Manhattan.

The group, known as the Lavender and Green Alliance, is an LBGT activist organization that claims to celebrate "Irish LGBT culture." Following a vote Tuesday by the parade's board of directors, an invitation was extended to the group to take part in the 2016 festivities.

This marks the first time in the parade's 253-year history that an independent homosexual group has been allowed to march in the parade under its own banner. Last year's inclusion of gay alliance OUT@NBCUniversal, which caused a firestorm of controversy, was the first time a specifically LGBT group took part in the parade, although the group marched as part of the NBC contingent and not as its own entity.

"The decision to invite an Irish LGBT organization ... sends a positive message across the Irish Cultural landscape," said the group's founder Brendan Fay in a statement released Tuesday. "As LGBT Irish Americans we thank John Lahey [vice-chairman of the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee] and the members of the Board for this historic decision which reflects the feelings of most Irish and Irish Americans."

Fay is well known throughout New York City as a human rights activist and filmmaker; he founded the Lavender and Green Alliance in 1994, and for years has actively protested the exclusion of gay groups from the annual celebration of Irish heritage. He also received a Master of Arts in theology from St. John's University — a Catholic school — and taught in New York Catholic high schools for five years.

"Everybody knows it's been such a long road getting here," he stated, alleging that he and other homosexuals of Irish descent "are transformed from being cultural outsiders to becoming insiders in [their] own Irish community."

Parade vice chairman John Lahey asserted that next year's parade will be "a special opportunity for renewed commitment to Irish values and traditions, and the Irish role in the 21st Century."

Lahey was promoted to vice chairman following this summer's ousting of long-time chairman John Dunleavy, who fought hard against gay groups that sought to march in the parade. Lahey was reportedly highly influential in allowing OUT@NBCUniversal to participate in this year's parade.

The long-standing rule held that gay people were welcome to march, but that banners and signs promoting their sexual identities would detract from the point of the parade — the celebration of Irish heritage — and were therefore forbidden.

Such standards sparked indignation in recent years from several people and organizations, including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (who has boycotted the parade during his two years in office) and NBC, who insisted the parade include a gay organization in exchange for sponsorship.

The ban was lifted in late 2014, with OUT@NBCUniversal making its debut the following March.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan served as grand marshal for the 2014 parade, despite considerable backlash from faithful Catholics.

"I have no trouble with the decision at all," the cardinal said at a press conference, referring to the inclusion of Out@NBC Universal. "I think the decision is a wise one."

Cardinal Dolan was approached by ChurchMilitant.com earlier this year at the St. Patrick's Day parade and questioned about the scandal of his participation. After Cdl. Dolan laughed off the question with a short response — "Come on in! We'd love to have ya'!" — the ChurchMilitant.com crew were roughed up and physically forced out of the press scrum under Cdl. Dolan's orders.

Understood, Brother.

Here, in part, the comment I made in response to a Brother Knight's email earlier this year:

The hijacking of St. Patrick's Day Parades is a subject with which I am not unfamiliar. The Greenbelt Labor Day Parade in which our Assembly marched is a publicly sponsored event. The Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade, on the other hand, is a privately sponsored event. This distinction, as pedestrian as it may seem, has crucial significance to the law pertaining to the rights of parade organizers to exclude persons of disparate opinion. The Supreme Court settled that question twenty years ago in a case pertaining to the very same parade.

In Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Group of Boston (94-749), 515 U.S. 557 (1995), Justice Souter delivered the unanimous opinion of the Court holding that the state courts' application of the Massachusetts Public Accommodations Law to require private citizens who organize a parade to include among the marchers a group imparting a message that the organizers do not wish to convey violates the First Amendment. It is the First Amendment rights of the parade organizers that is at stake in this instance, not those of the LGBT group seeking to crash the party, as it were.

Having considered the law as it applies to this matter, I now turn to the facts. In the face of an unambiguous right under Federal Law authorizing the parade organizers to exclude from participation a group whose agenda is inimical their beliefs, two groups of homosexual activists, assisted by a concupiscent municipal government, ran roughshod over the rights of the parade organizers and strong-armed their way into participation in the parade in question. This mode of activism contrasts vividly with the principals of Fraternity and Charity cherished by our Order. This mode of activism has had, and continues to have, a chilling effect on our God-given Rights under the First Amendment.

By way of example, in the last several months, Chaplains in our Armed Forces have been relieved of duty, forced to resign, or muzzled because they refused to march in lockstep with the Administration's advancement of the gay agenda, but instead gave counsel in accordance with their traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs. Similarly, business owners have been punished for refusing to provide services the provision of which would violate their religious beliefs. I refer of course, among others, to the bakers who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple and as as result face legal action and civil fines. Within the last month, the YAF chapter at George Washington University has been branded as a hate group because it requested a religious exemption (on behalf of the majority of its members who adhere to traditional Judeo-Christian concepts of morality) from mandatory sensitivity training ordered by the Student Government in connection with the University's adoption of gender neutral facilities and language. As shown in these examples, and a legion of others to which I could refer, the Gay Lobby is systematically emasculating our First Amendment Rights of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Assembly, day-by-day and inch-by-inch in all aspects of public discourse.

Considering the question from the point of view of Catholic teaching, I refer you to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Par. 2357, which characterizes homosexuality as intrinsically disordered:

"Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,140 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."141 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved."
The mandate to observing Catholics in the final sentence of that paragraph is inescapable. Further, it bears keeping in mind, particularly in light of the hostile milieu in which we now find ourselves, the importance of avoidance of giving scandal. The participation by LGBT activists in events such as St. Patrick's Day Parades is calculated to undermine Catholic teaching, to normalize what the Church says is "intrinsically disordered." It is my position that a practicing Catholic who participates in a parade or similar event under the circumstances of this particular case gives tacit approval, albeit not intentionally, to the agenda of the other participants.

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