Posted on 03/15/2014 8:34:48 AM PDT by raccoonradio
The fight over Southies St. Patricks Day Parade got frosty yesterday, with Boston Beer Co. pulling its longtime sponsorship from the parade over the organizers refusal to let gay veterans march and one Southie bar fighting back with a vow to boycott the brew.
Sam Adams doesnt support South Boston. They dont want to support veterans like my father and uncle, so they can go sell their beer elsewhere, said Tommy Flaherty Jr., a lifelong Southie resident whose father and uncle own the landmark Cornerstone Pub & Restaurant on West Broadway.
Flaherty Jr. said he and his father, Thomas Flaherty Sr., 70, and his uncle John Flaherty, 81, were taken aback when they learned yesterday afternoon from reading bostonherald.com that the brewing behemoth pulled its sponsorship, so they decided not to sell Sam Adams indefinitely.
(Boston Beer Co. has) no problem taking the money from the people drinking at the bars along the parade route, Flaherty Jr. said, adding he has no qualms with gay people. We serve to everybody. I dont have a problem with gay people, nor do my father and uncle.
Boston Beer Co. could not be reached last night for comment on Cornerstones boycott. Representatives of the beer company until yesterday listed as a proud sponsor on the parades website have marched in past years, but announced yesterday morning they will not participate this year because the organizer, Allied Veterans War Council, is refusing to change its longtime policy of banning anyone from marching under a gay-rights banner.
We have been participating in the South Boston St. Patricks Day Parade for nearly a decade, Boston Beer Co. said in a statement. We were hopeful that both sides of this issue would be able to come to an agreement that would allow everyone, regardless of orientation, to participate in the parade. But given the current status of the negotiations, we realize this may not be possible.
The flap came after other supporters, including Westin Hotels and Gillette, distanced themselves from the parade. Yesterday, the parades website which had featured dozens of business backers erased its sponsorship page and replaced it with a message saying, Were updating our sponsors, thank you for your patience.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh said last night he was still hopeful a deal can be made.
Weve gotten pretty close to an agreement here, and I think a lot of people thought this was the year we were going to have an agreement, Walsh said. Im not giving up on that hope, we still have some time left. ... I have a glimmer of hope that were going to be able to work something out.
As for Boston Beer Co. pulling its sponsorship, the mayor said, They made a policy decision there, and I commend them for it.
The latter, of course. The parade was negotiating with this group of "gay veterans" in good faith. The original compromise was to allow the group to march without any identifying signs.
Then the parade organizers learned that the "gay veterans group" consisted of one gay veteran, and twenty sympathizers. So the organizers, sensing an impending orgy, scrubbed the group from the approved list.
Meanwhile, Catholic school groups decided to rejoin the parade.
So far, so good. And it looks like time is running out for the perverts.
oops “1997 Supreme Court decision says we can refuse to let you in”
thx.
Eh, not on St Patricks Day. No.
No. The parade organizers are a veterans' group. They say people can't march under a gay-rights banner. Therefore, gay veterans can march; but no one can march in support of gay rights.
Too bad. I sure it’s popular in the Castro.
If you want to march as an Irishman, Irishwoman, a Catholic, American Irish, a veteran, a fireman, a cop, a longshoreman, a railroader, an Orangeman, or even a damn politician, I don't have a problem with that. That's all related to Irish and American Irish history and part of St Patrick's tradition.
If you want to march braying to the world that you area a "rooster" sucker, that's not what it's about. That's disrespectful, and not appropriate for that event. If you are gay and want to march as Irish or American Irish and leave your personal life where it belong, then I have no problem with that.
I've marched before (not east coast). I kept my politics at home as I wasn't a candidate. I didn't wear "straight pride" (as ridiculous as that sounds) either. That was left at home too.
>>But MassEquality, the gay advocacy group that was offered a chance to march under its banner, felt that wasnt good enough; instead it demanded that its delegation could declare its sexuality on banners and T-shirts. Hey folks, who you love, who you sleep with, who you want to spend your life with: Who cares? You say its no ones business, then insist on making it everyones business by, to borrow a chant from Queer Nation, telling a captive audience, Were here! Were queer! Get used to it!
>>Remember?
>> Perhaps you also remember how Act Up, a kindred spirit to Queer Nation, expressed its sentiments by throwing condoms at newly ordained priests and their families outside Holy Cross Cathedral. We should get used to that? Please. Those condom-tossing reprobates who claimed they were representing homosexuality were not unlike the hooligans who believe the way to represent being Irish is to vomit in Andrew Square.
An old adage tells us we dont have to go to every fight were invited to, but thats what MassEquality was itching to do, spoiling for a fight, intentionally making itself the skunk at the lawn party.
(snip)
>>Theres a letter in the files here from a reader named Richard, then 47, who sent it in the aftermath of the 1997 Gay Pride Parade, which featured a man on stilts wearing a loin cloth that he kept lifting to show he was wearing nothing else, and another man garbed in only a net body stocking.
My parents always knew I was gay, he wrote, but its taken me years to let the rest of the family know, including two aunts we knew would be very upset. Well, I was sitting with them the night of the parade, watching TV coverage of it, when one of them asked, Are these your new friends, Richard?
That hurt. Those marchers did not represent my homosexuality, my pride, or my friends pride.
Why? Are you saying the bar should support gays taking over the parade organizers and having their own way -- again?
Everybody should go into the bar and order anything other than Sam Adams, to thank the bar owners for standing on principle.
> “I’m getting real tired of all this ,, “
I was just on the phone with a friend telling him about this FR excerpt and he said exactly “I’m getting real tired of all this” just as I noticed your post...eerie but not surprising as the tipping point must be real close here.
For the life of me, I do not understand what “rights” these people want. They can get married, they can live together, for the most part, great occupations, good education, they can adopt or have children. They can live wherever they want. No one stops them from voting, attending church, the list goes on. Do they want a parade float allowing them to demonstrate their sexual proclivities?
This is just an impression, from a kid at the time:
In the 60s there used to be a bit of, ‘England out of Ireland’ sentiment, and some banners, but the faithful in Ireland, the sentiment was England out of Ireland, but... there were most very against the violence. And there were many very against the IRA for its tactics.
In America, there wasn’t any of it. No fighting, violence. there was the understanding that it was their (the Irish in Ireland) business not the Irish in America, and there was also a sort of room for all opinions.
At the parade, strictly speaking, that is. If that helps. In Boston, the parade organizers, I do not know.
In 20002002, the company sponsored a radio promotion called "Sex for Sam", in which WNEW radio hosts Opie and Anthony encouraged couples from various states to have sex in notable public places in New York City. On August 15, 2002, a Virginia couple was charged with public lewdness after attempting to have sex in a vestibule at St. Patrick's Cathedral; this led to the firing of the radio hosts a week later.
And no one wore any Orange. it was unspokenly banned.
One piece left out is that the Boston Brewing Co/Sam Adams pulled its sponsorship after a gay bar said it would boycott Sam Adams for continuing its sponsorship of the parade. Then Flaherty decided they would boycott for Sam Adams’s withdrawal of support.
I was never great at math or statistics, but assume there are more beer-drinking Irishman than beer-drinking gays. The mayor is an a$$ for commending Boston Brewing Co’s principled policy decision.
Amen. No more Sam Adams beer being bought by this household.
I like Stella Artois. Used to like Sam Adams but no more. It will now be the gay beer.
Here’s the problem. It is not the 1-3% of the population that is homosexual that Sam Adams is catering to, it is the vast majority of 18-40 y/os, many of whom are beer drinkers, that are totally all in on what they perceive as a fairness issue. Most don’t have any homosexual friends and know little about the lifestyle, but they have been indoctrinated since preschool with the tolerance/fairness issue when it comes to homosexuality. They would tell you it is horrible that the old, white, religious, intolerant men running the parade aren’t being inclusive. None of them will stop buying SA beer, and in fact some my go out of their way to buy it for their parties to show solidarity with the homosexuals being discriminated against.
Sorry to break the news to you, but this country is as dead as a two week old beached whale carcass on a hot beach. It is just slowly decaying from the inside out. The young’un have been taught well. As I believe Lenin said, “Give me your children when they are young and I will own them forever.” The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and that hand has been the liberal education establishment and media for at least a generation. Stick a fork in us we are done.
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