The following is an extended version of the story that appears in our latest print edition.

 

Were it just “the luck of the Irish” that was needed, it might not have taken two decades for an Irish LGBTQ+ group to finally make history, marching this year for the first time ever, under the group’s identifying banner, in the annual Bronx St. Patrick’s Day parade in Throggs Neck, on Sunday, March 13. But as parade participant, Brendan Fay, knows, changing the world sometimes means shifting hearts and minds, which itself requires imagination, patience, persistence, grace in the face of opposition, a sense of humor, and a big dose of faith and love! Fay epitomizes all of the above, and then some.

 

Having been involved in various efforts down through the decades to push for Irish LGBT+ representation in the Manhattan St. Patrick’s Day parade, in 1994, Fay founded Lavender and Green Alliance (L&GA) / Muintir Aerach na hÉireann, which celebrates Irish LGBTQ+ culture and identity. Five years later, in 1999, he was arrested at the annual Throggs Neck St. Patrick’s Day parade for attempting to march with the group.

 

On Sunday, March 13, twenty-three years later, L&GA returned, and along with members of the Stonewall Democrats, the Third Avenue BID and other LGBTQ+ activists and allied community members were welcomed to march in Throggs Neck. “We return to the place of exclusion and arrest, but this time to celebrate welcome, Irish heritage and LGBT visibility,” Fay said.

Explaining the background to the Bronx element of the long-fought journey, Fay told the Norwood News that at the time, in 1999, the office of former Bronx borough president, Fernando Ferrer, contacted both the parade’s organizers, Throggs Neck Benevolent Association (TNBA), and L&GA in the context of funding discussions around the parade. Following this, TNBA extended an invitation to Fay’s group to march. “They reached out to us and said, ‘We would welcome you!’” Fay said.

 

Delighted with the breakthrough, he shared the news during an L&GA event ahead of the parade day. The announcement was picked up by local City newspaper, The Irish Echo, who wrote a story about it. Fay explained, “Then, basically, groups began to contact the [Throggs Neck] parade organizers and said, ‘We will not march in that parade if….” Three days later, the L&GA’s invitation to march in The Bronx was withdrawn.

Undeterred, on parade day, Fay and then-State Sen. Tom Duane, the Senate’s first openly gay and first openly HIV-positive member, and then-City Council Member Christine Quinn, the first female and first openly gay speaker of the council, prepared to step off anyway as part of the procession, but were arrested. “I like to say to people I wasn’t arrested for disturbing the peace,” Fay said of the 1999 event. “I was arrested for disturbing the prejudice.”

 

Michael Brady, Bronxite, LGBTQ leader, and CEO of the Third Avenue BID and the Bruckner Boulevard commercial corridor, who also marched as part of the coalition in the Throggs Neck parade this year, said the inclusion of the group in the local Bronx parade was a moment of healing for those Bronxites who had been excluded for so many years. “In terms of the representation that day, it was really great,” Brady told Norwood News.

 

“We had families there, we had strollers, we had people in wheelchairs, we had people in walkers, we had members from our trans community, our lesbian community… everyone was out and marching together, and it was just a real milestone to a movement that we’ve all been working towards building,” he added.

Indeed, the history behind the movement for Irish LGBTQ+ inclusion in St. Patrick’s Day parades both across the City, and across the United States is in many ways like the history of Irish independence – long, bloody, complicated, and ever-evolving.

 

In 1991, the late New York City Mayor David Dinkins was the first mayor to march with an Irish LGBTQ+ group in the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s Day parade in Manhattan, albeit without an identifying banner. Together with the mayor, the activists marched under the banner of, and alongside, another parade contingent. This was not the preferred arrangement, the activists wanting instead to march under their own identifying banner but it was a first step. According to media reports from that time, however, Dinkins would compare the experience to the civil rights marches of the 1960s. The group dodged beer cans and were subject to ugly, homophobic slurs along the parade route.

 

The legal path to parade inclusion, fought on discriminatory grounds, ended with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 1995 when, as reported by The New York Times, it ruled that private sponsors of a parade had a constitutional right to exclude marchers whose message they rejected, “including those who sought to identify themselves as gay, lesbian, and bisexual Irish Americans.” Activists like Fay had been repeatedly arrested for years for attempting to peacefully march with their community.

 

In the years since the Supreme Court ruling, the movement focused their efforts on changing hearts and minds, which was why the initial 1999 Bronx outreach and invitation was such a turning point. Following the Bronx debacle, Fay founded “St. Pat’s for All,” an all-inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade in Queens, welcoming all manner of diverse groups from all cultural backgrounds, as well as those with disabilities, for a day of celebration and inclusivity. The annual event has been going strong for about 20 years, with many elected officials at one point refusing to march in the main Manhattan St. Patrick’s Day parade, and joining the Queens gathering instead.

 

Through dialogue and campaigning, and with the final blessing of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, L&GA members were eventually welcomed to march under their own identifying banner in the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s Day parade in 2016, (which, coincidentally, also marked the centenary of Ireland’s 1916 revolution, which lead the way to independence for the Rep. of Ireland). Three years later, in 2019, BILGO, a local, Brooklyn, Irish LGBTQ+ group marched for the first time under their own banner in a local, Park Slope St. Patrick’s Day parade in Brooklyn.

 

Despite the official reversal of positions by the Catholic Church regarding the Fifth Avenue parade, to date, the Pride Center of Staten Island is still precluded from marching in the island’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, the largest community parade held on the island. Representatives of the Pride Center continue to formally apply each year but are refused, with the parade committee citing their inclusion under an identifying banner as a conflict with the Catholic Church tenets. This student made video, made in 2019, provides a condensed history of the situation up to that point.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, where St. Patrick’s Day is the country’s national holiday, no such parade restrictions apply. The St. Patrick’s festival committee in Dublin, which organizes the annual, national parade, provided the following statement in 2019 on the issue of inclusion. “St. Patrick’s festival promotes diversity and inclusion,” the statement read. “It is not affiliated to any religious or political organizations [and] is independent from any other festival taking place around the world.”

 

The statement continued, “St. Patrick’s Festival is a statement of what it is to be Irish, our culture, our heritage and our creativity. It celebrates all the people of Ireland, our citizens of all ages, abilities, ethnicities and social backgrounds. St. Patrick’s Festival is a proud celebration of our vibrant, inclusive, contemporary and multicultural nation.”

 

Indeed, in 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to vote in favor of marriage equality by popular vote, and two years later, elected its first openly gay prime minister (taoiseach), Leo Varadkar, whose father happens to be Indian.

 

On March 13, at the 24th Annual Throggs Neck St. Patrick’s Day parade, L&GA said they were thrilled to return as welcomed guests to share in what they said was an Irish tradition of inclusion of all people to celebrate the immigrant history and heritage, Irish and Celtic. The marchers said they were warmly welcomed by hospitable crowds in the Throggs Neck neighborhood.

 

Fay’s husband, Dr. Tom Moulton, carried the group’s historic, silk, Irish, tricolor flag created by Gilbert Baker, who also designed the LGBT rainbow flag. Moulton and Fay first met at Sunday mass through Dignity NY, New York’s home for LGBTQI Catholics and their allies since 1972.

 

Reflecting on the historic nature of the group’s inclusion in the Bronx parade this year, Fay said, “Look, when the history is written of the parades, down the road, the original breakthrough in the entire parade controversy, which had gone to the Supreme Court, came from The Bronx.” Though the 1999 invitation to the Throggs Neck parade was short-lived, it spurred on the wider movement in New York City, and slowly paved the way for incremental change across the boroughs.

 

Reacting to the atmosphere on the day, Fay said, “There was a lot of cheering for our group and the joy of our inclusion!” he said. “A few of us arrived early for the mass at St Benedict’s. Back in 1999, last time I was here was with Barbara Mohr and Stanley Rygor. Both have been gone some years, but they are still present in love, remembered as we joined the parade. They prayed and advocated for this day of welcome and hospitality.”

Fay, who is also a filmmaker, and an active campaigner for nuclear disarmament, said that, at the church, the group thanked the Throgg’s Neck parade organizers and joined prayers for an end to the tragic war in Ukraine. “Along the parade route, a family stood waving their Ukraine flag, their faces weary with [the] sadness of war,” he said. “In the middle of our celebration, we were all mindful of the world we live in, and the tragedy of war.”

 

Meanwhile, Brady said of the occasion, “The contributions of the Irish and Irish American community have had a great impact on The Bronx. It was an honor to march with Lavender and Green Alliance as part of this year’s Throggs Neck St. Patrick’s Parade and be part of history as we continue the Irish mission of fostering inclusion and diversity among our people.” He added, “As a business owner and leader of a business organization, I have a message: inclusion and diversity are good for business, and good for The Bronx.”

Norwood News asked Brady if he had any words of encouragement for the Pride Center of Staten Island in the context of their ongoing mission to be included in the island’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, given it is now the only remaining borough to host a parade which upholds the ban on LGBTQ+ groups marching under an identifying banner. He replied, “It breaks my heart; it’s truly disheartening that Staten Island has not kept up with the times, and have really not opened hearts and minds to the LGBT+ community, particularly on St. Patrick’s Day when, you know, we celebrate everything that is Irish.”

 

He added, “And if there’s one thing that is Ireland, it is inclusion, it is diversity, and it is going out of the oppression and into the healing, and I think that it would be Tom foolish if Staten Island continued the practice of exclusion.”

 

That message was echoed by Justin Sanchez, president of Stonewall Democrats, who said, “The LGBTQ+ community is a diverse puzzle that only truly comes together when all the pieces unify to create one beautiful image. We are thankful to the organizers of the Throggs Neck St. Patrick’s Day Parade for opening their hearts and their march to celebrate the tremendous contributions and proud heritage of the Irish and Irish American LGBTQ+ community.”

 

The parade stepped off at noon at the corner of East Tremont and Lafayette Avenues. The route was just about a mile and a half, ending on Harding Avenue, close to Brinsmade. On March 17, Lavender and Green Alliance marched, once again, in the Manhattan St. Patrick’s Day parade.

 

“We thank the parade organizers for their welcome,” Fay concluded of the Throggs Neck event. “The inclusion of our Lavender and Green Alliance group in the Bronx St. Patrick’s parade is a moment of healing and history that sends a positive message of equal belonging to our LGBT youth and our families. Parades are always more joyful celebrations when all are welcome. This is a huge day for the LGBT Irish community, for The Bronx, and for New York City.”

 

We contacted Throggs Neck Benevolent Association for comment on the occasion, but did not receive an immediate response.

Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, District 13 City Council Member Marjorie Velázquez and Deputy Bronx Borough President Janet A. Peguero were among the elected officials who joined the parade celebrations on the day. Gibson later tweeted, “With our Deputy Borough President @jpegnyc_, on a wonderful Sunday Afternoon celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in our Throggs Neck community with elected officials, schools, businesses, residents and families. Happy Irish Heritage! ☘️☘️ #Bronx”

 

On Tuesday, March 15, Gibson hosted an Irish Heritage and Culture celebration at the Rambling House in the Woodlawn section of The Bronx. Honorees on the night included the Grand Marshall of the Throggs Neck St. Patrick’s Day Parade and recording secretary for the Throggs Neck Homeowners Association, Jack McCarrick, humanitarian and organizer, Sean Ruane, youth advocate, Robert Moriarity, and P.S. 11X019 Judith K. Weiss School student, Scott McKiernan, who received a youth award.

Independent observers of the decade-long struggle for inclusion in cultural parades have sometimes questioned why it is so important for LGBTQ+ groups to march under a banner in their local, cultural parades like the St. Patrick’s Day parade, when they could, arguably, just march in the annual Pride parade. The most common answer is that people are not only of a particular sexual orientation on one day of the year, during Pride, just as they are not only Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, or Catholic on Sundays.

 

Activists say being of a particular sexual orientation is an intrinsic part of their identity, each and every day. Having to suppress or hide that in order to celebrate with communities of which they are also members and openly express their equal pride in their own heritage, culture or religion, causes them unnecessary internal conflict and isolation. For them, parades are about being seen as whole people, and not just as one version of themselves.

Former Queens City Council Member Danny Dromm said in 2019, in reference to Lavender & Green Alliance’s inclusion in the Fifth Avenue parade, “Now, that we can march in this parade, I’m getting more involved in other organizations, so over the years we’ve had struggles in other communities as well.” He added, “I worked with a group called SALGA to get them included in the India Day parade.”

 

Summing up the issue, Fay concluded, “You shouldn’t have to leave a part of yourself at the door. Parades like this send a message to our children that you belong.”

 

Click here to watch the full parade, courtesy of Kin Tsui via YouTube.

For more information about Lavender & Green Alliance, visit www.lavenderandgreenalliance.org.