Posted on 03/17/2015 4:32:52 AM PDT by HomerBohn
This years St. Patricks Day Parade in Boston went on as "unusual" Sunday, with avowedly homosexual groups coming in, the states Knights of Columbus dropping out, city and state political figures celebrating the events new inclusiveness, and the leader of a conservative Catholic organization calling on parade organizers to remove Saint Patricks name from the event.
Other than that it was a typical St. Patricks Day Parade.
Crowds lined the city streets to watch the event, which was shortened due to huge snow banks at curbside along portions of the usual route. Police reported 10 arrests and 278 citations, most of them for public drinking, according to media reports. The light, cold rain that fell on the marchers and spectators bore little resemblance to the verbal storm over the South Boston Allied War Veteran Councils decision to include two gay and lesbian groups OutVets and Boston Pride in the line of march. For the first time in the 114-year history of the event, groups celebrating homosexuality were included in a parade ostensibly honoring a Catholic saint.
On Saturday, the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts (CALM) issued a statement calling on parade organizers to remove the name of Irelands patron saint from the event. The saint's venerable name should not be cheaply misappropriated by nominally Catholic politicians and anti-Catholic organizations with a same-sex agenda, wrote CALM Executive Director C.J. Doyle, charging that the event would debase the name of Saint Patrick by associating it with the tawdry circus that will take place on Broadway tomorrow.
CALM and the conservative group Mass Resistance both denounced the Massachusetts Knights of Columbus for its planned participation in the parade before the Knights announced late last week their decision to drop out. In a message on its website, the well known Catholic fraternity organization said it had believed the parade would be an occasion for unity and celebration in the city of Boston, adding:
We deeply regret that some have decided to use this occasion to further the narrow objectives of certain special interests, which has subjected this occasion to undeserved division and controversy. In addition, certain groups have chosen to misrepresent our reason for marching, insisting that we were participating in the parade to support another group or for political reasons. Such allegations are complete fabrications and have no basis in reality whatsoever.
Mass Resistance issued a statement crediting intense pressure from traditional Catholics for the Knights reversal. The Knights of Columbus had not been in the parade for at least 20 years, the group said, suggesting that the plan to participate this year was to show approval of the new inclusiveness.
Many of the states leading political figures had made a point of staying away from the parade during more the than two decades of controversy over the exclusion of homosexual organizations. In the early 1990s a group called the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexuals of Boston took the issue to court, claiming the event, with up to 20,000 marchers and as many as a million spectators on the streets of Boston, is a public accommodation and their exclusion was a violation of the states anti-discrimination laws. The legal battle went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a 9-0 ruling in 1995 held that forcing the parades organizers to include groups with themes contrary to their own would violate of expressive freedom protected by the First Amendment.
Elected officials have nonetheless boycotted the event in the years since, with some choosing instead to take part in the Gay Pride Parade held in Boston each June. Boston Beer Companys Sam Adams withdrew its sponsorship of the St. Patricks Day Parade last year. Mayor Martin Walsh, who has marched in the Gay Pride Parade both as candidate and as mayor, became the first Boston mayor in 20 years to join the citys Saint Patricks Day event when he marched in Sundays parade. Both last year and this, Walsh reportedly lobbied hard with the parades organizers to get gay groups in.
Im very happy, Walsh said just before marching. We can finally move beyond the issue of inclusiveness. Governor Charlie Baker, Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito, U.S. Senator Edward Markey, and U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch, a South Boston native, were among the other political figures in the parade, the Boston Globe reported. U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, marched with the OutVets. "Gay rights is the civil rights fight of our generation, Moulton said. Members of the Boston City Council also took part in the festivities. Police Commissioner William Evans, also a South Boston native, told the Globe the parade always makes it a good day, adding, Its great that its now inclusive.
For some people and organizations, however, living by a moral code is as much a matter of excluding as it is of including certain causes and events. The Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Harvard, Massachusetts, which has sent a float and a 40-member band to the parade for past 25 years, this year announced it would not be joining in the festivities.
"We don't want to be seen as condoning homosexual activity and gay marriage," said the school's principal, Brother Thomas Dalton.
Few among the states political leaders, including its many Catholics, appear hindered by such scruples.
Happy St. Paddy’s day.
Are you wearing green?
5.56mm
I love it when a fallen world comes to an end.
No green nail polish, though.
O'Leni
No chocolate?
mumble, mumble.
Thank you m’arm...may I have another?
/Oliver reference
:-)
Who is wearin’ the orange other than me?
Their acts of same-sex anal and oral penetration, their penetrations of each others' bodies with inanaimate objects, their same sex genital contact are all pretenses ... sick, disgusting and evil mockeries of God's wonderful gift of human sexualith.
No, it's NOT clintonian parsing.
In the vernacular of our new electoral overlords:
muchas gracias!
Yet, we have given the re-structuring of the language over to those who would equate sodomy with “sex”.
One involves selfish gratification, the other involves expanding the church.
Funny how that works
My apologies for the atrocious spelling above.
Did I mention that I hate virtual keyboards?
Me great-grandma came from County Cork...and me wonderful conservative nephew, Michael Patrick, is celebrating his birthday today.....St. Pat's Day!
O'Leni
Excerpts from my card to wifie who is part Irish. Scottish, French;
“St. Patrick was a man of God
who came to Erin’s land
With a loving prayer within his heart,
a shamrock in his hand.
He used the three-leafed shamrock
to help all the see
How there could be three persons
in the Holy Trinity.”
BTW, St. Patrick’s Day was when I proposed to her 32 years ago and last night we were both decked out in GREEN, for a late dinner out!!!
Honoring Michael O’bama???
Just wonder WHY God created Adam and Eve as a man and a woman, and HOW He then created the faggots to be “productive” in child births???
WHY do you think is the reason Slick Willy is chasing every skirt that comes within three feet of him, hmmm???
Aside from him being a degenerate horndog? And Hildebeast mating with Web Hubbell?
TOO RIGHT!!! Folk like Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi... etc., etc. ... The American church has crawled into bed with the devil!
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