Bill Donohue speaks to the latest attempts to control the New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade:
The parade committee’s decision to allow a cherry-picked NBC gay unit to march in the 2015 parade has triggered an onslaught of applications from other gay groups, as well as new attempts to wrest control of the parade.
These efforts were given more fuel when parade committee vice chairman John Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University, announced that he was “enthusiastic” about sitting down with Brendan Fay to discuss his interest in marching in 2016. Fay is a gay activist who was an official in DignityUSA, a radical dissident Catholic gay group that works to undermine the Church. He says he is married to a man.
Applying to march in the 2015 parade are Irish Queers, St. Pat’s for All, the Lavender and Green Alliance, and gay groups within established non-gay organizations. Also, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announced on Monday that it has applied to march.
HRC is the nation’s largest gay group, one that is highly critical of the Church’s teachings on sexuality. In July, it berated the New York Giants because it hired David Tyree to be its new Director of Player Development (he is the Giants’ hero in the 2007 Super Bowl). Tyree’s crime? He supports marriage as the union between a man and a woman. HRC has also lashed out at Francis Cardinal George for defending what it considers the Church’s “discriminatory” policies against homosexuals. It is important to note that one of HRC’s biggest sponsors is Diageo, owner of Guinness; it is a “Platinum Partner.”
On another front, attempts are being made by gay activists, left-wing groups, and gay politicians to wrest control of the parade permit from the parade committee. They are pressuring New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to give them the permit, but so far their efforts have failed. This is just the beginning—look for more attempts to crash the parade over the next six months.
