Bill Donohue speaks to some issues regarding New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade that need to be addressed:
Yesterday, William O’Reilly, the parade’s spokesman, said that only one gay group, affiliated with NBC, would march in the 2015 St. Patrick’s Day Parade; we were told the same thing earlier. But just a few hours later he was undercut by John Lahey, the vice chairman of the parade: he said other gay groups could still apply to march in next year’s parade.
Even more problematic is what O’Reilly said when asked if a pro-abortion group could march. He replied, “Anyone can apply.” Why not simply say that this is a Catholic event, and as such any group that is flagrantly promoting what the Church says is an “intrinsic evil,” namely abortion, shouldn’t bother to apply. Why hedge? NARAL Pro-Choice New York, the anti-Catholic advocate of partial-birth abortion, is already expressing its unhappiness with the absence of pro-abortion groups from the parade.
Now Irish LGBT groups also want to march. This started a long time ago when ILGO (Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization) first lobbied to be included in the parade. In the 1990s, Anne Maguire, one of the founders of ILGO, admitted that its members had no real interest in honoring St. Patrick. After failing in her bid in the courts to push her way into the parade, she said that “most [ILGO] people, particularly those of us who are most actively involved, had no inclination to be associated with, never mind march in, the parade. [The protest], very simply, is where our ‘coming out’ took place.”
The goal of these activists, supported by the corporate elite, is to neuter the religious element of the parade. This is an Irish-Catholic parade, and if what comes after the hyphen is cut, so will the parade’s support, beginning with the Catholic League.
