Gay pride in St. Patrick's parade is victory, should not be reversed

While many Tufts students were enjoying spring break in less snow-covered locales, a small piece of history was made on March 15 at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Boston when two gay rights groups were allowed to march in the parade for the first time ever. After Mayor Marty Walsh refused to march in the 2014 parade due to a failure to allow the pro-gay rights group MassEquality to march, it seems that the organizer of the parade, the Allied War Veteran’s Council, changed its tune this year; it allowed two groups that openly support gay rights to participate. Outvets and Boston Pride were the first groups that openly support gay rights to march in the parade, and Boston Pride even brought rainbow umbrellas to celebrate this historic allowance.

Sadly, on March 21, the story began to shift, and it seems that what was a great victory for LGBTQ advocates is simply being called a mistake by the Allied War Veteran’s Council. In an opinion piece published in South Boston Today, a parade organizer said that while they had little problem with Outvets — an organization that supports LGBTQ veterans and active service members — they believed upon reading the applications that Boston Pride was an extension of the Boston Strong organization, a movement that helped raise relief funds after the Marathon Bombing. However, when they found out before the parade that Boston Pride was, in fact, a gay rights organization, the Allied War Veteran’s Council still let it march. Sadly, Boston Pride’s use of rainbow umbrellas during the parade was a bit too political for some, and it seems that the organization is going back to square one in terms of acceptance. According to an organizer of the parade, “we can all play word games, but again we’re running a celebratory event not a protest or social movement. In any event, we review tapes of the parade for improvements and violations and will take action where appropriate.”

This, of course, is inconsistent with past statements made by organizers saying that one reason they did not allow pro-gay organizations to march was that their message conflicted with the organizers’ Roman Catholic heritage. By barring certain groups that it does not find to be “moral” from making political statements, the Allied War Veteran’s Council is inherently making its own political statements about which messages are appropriate and which are not. Although the parade is a private event, given that it uses Boston’s streets and represents Irish culture, the fact that it shoehorns the council’s own political views by not allowing pro-gay rights groups to march is morally backwards and ignores the history of the Irish and their oppression. While legally the organizers are protected due to a 1995 US Supreme Court case on this very matter, the decision to reverse opening up the parade to gay people is quite clearly a perversion of what St. Patrick’s Day is all about.

As stated by the Allied War Veteran’s Council, St. Patrick’s Day is a time for celebration. It is also a time for the Irish, a group that has historically faced oppression and unfairness, to celebrate their identity and show the world what it means to be Irish. By discriminating against pro-gay rights groups, though, the Allied War Veteran’s Council essentially ignores a group going through similar struggles that the Irish overcame and creates a hostile environment where LGBTQ people, or even allies, feel uncomfortable expressing their beliefs. To put it bluntly, this is not what St. Patrick’s Day, a time of celebration and merriment, should be about.