Revelers at New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade (Photo: Sgt. Randall Clinton, via Wikimedia Commons).
Organizers of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade will allow a second LGBT group to participate in next year’s march, just months after ending the longstanding ban on LGBT groups this spring, according to The Huffington Post.
As in many other U.S. cities, the parade, whose organizers have tended to be conservative Catholics, had a longstanding ban on gay and lesbian groups marching under their own banners. Organizers had worried that being seen as supportive of LGBT groups — viewed by some as political, rather than identity-based — would detract from the overall purpose of the parade, which was to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland.
In march of this year, Out@NBCUniversal, a group composed of LGBT people who work for NBCUniversal, became the first openly gay group to break the ban. For the 2016 parade, they will be joined by a second group, the Lavender & Green Alliance. The annual New York event draws up to 250,000 marchers each year.
“With the decision, we cross a historic threshold and our members will proudly march up Fifth Avenue with our banner,” said Brendan Fay, founder and chair of the Lavender & Green Alliance in a statement with parade organizers. The Lavender & Green Alliance had previously applied annually to march, but their application was rejected each year.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials previously said that they would boycott the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 2014 over the organizers’ refusal to allow LGBT groups to march with their own banner or any identifying information. The mayor continued that boycott earlier this year, even with the addition of Out@NBCUniversal. The Wall Street Journalreported earlier this year that, even though Out@NBCUniversal was allowed to march, it was one of the last contingents to do so, and only began marching at 4 p.m. after the local NBC affiliate had stopped broadcasting the parade.
According to The Huffington Post, de Blasio’s office this week said the mayor was aware of the inclusion of a second LGBT group, but did not say whether he planned to end his self-imposed boycott of the event in time for next year’s parade.
Two men were beaten and subjected to anti-gay slurs in what police believe was a bias-motivated attack in downtown Manhattan last month.
The victims, ages 31 and 37, were walking on Broadway near West 29th Street around 7:30 p.m. on July 31 when two men approached them and made anti-LGBTQ remarks, according to the New York Daily News.
The assailants then repeatedly punched and kicked the victims while shouting homophobic slurs, according to police. The suspects fled south on Broadway.
"One of the reasons I became a journalist is because I can't stop talking to strangers," says Joseph Fenity. "I'm just so curious. I find people fascinating. I've missed planes because I was talking to a stranger at the airport."
A gay independent journalist who has written for Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, and Out Magazine, Fenity grew up in a conservative Texas town along Interstate 35 between Austin and San Antonio. His natural curiosity, combined with a degree of fearlessness, has served him well.
He got an early start in the field through a world-altering event: the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which occurred when he was 16.
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