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| People dress in the emerald green to honour Ireland's Saint Partick, as they enjoy the atmosphere during the St Patrick's day parade in Dublin, Ireland, March, 17, 2014. The world's largest parade celebrating Irish heritage set off on a cold and gray morning, the culmination of a weekend of St. Patrick's Day revelry. |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- A weekend of St. Patrick's Day revelry and tensions over the
exclusion of gays in some of the celebrations culminated Monday in New
York, where the world's largest parade celebrating Irish heritage
stepped off without the city's new mayor and Guinness beer amid a
dispute over whether participants can carry pro-gay signs.
The
parade of kilted Irish-Americans and bagpipers set off on a cold, gray
morning. Hundreds of thousands of spectators lined Fifth Avenue, but the
shivering, bundled up crowd was only about half as thick as in previous
years.
Revelers also gathered elsewhere for
green-themed celebrations, including some 400,000 locals and tourists in
Dublin, where gay rights groups took part in the festivities.
De
Blasio held New York's traditional St. Patrick's Day breakfast at
Gracie Mansion with the Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, but boycotted
the parade because organizers said marchers were not allowed to carry
gay-friendly signs or identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or
transgender.
Weeks ago de Blasio said he would
skip the parade over the issue, but Guinness abruptly dropped its
support a day before the event. The Dublin-based company pulled
sponsorship assets, including on-air presence, parade participation and
any promotional materials that weren't already printed, although the
beer maker had already made a payment to parade organizers, spokeswoman
Alix Dunn said.
Other beer companies took part
in the boycotts, with Samuel Adams withdrawing its sponsorship of
Boston's parade and Heineken also bagging New York's parade because of
the exclusion of gays.
Roman Catholic Cardinal
Timothy Dolan, who greeted passing dignitaries in front of St.
Patrick's Cathedral wearing a woolen Irish cap over his red cardinal's
skull cap, said he supports the participation of individual gays and
hoped St. Patrick's Day could be a day of unity and joy.
"I
know that there are thousands and thousands of gay people marching in
this parade," he said. "I know it. And I'm glad they are."
Police
Commissioner William Bratton marched with a contingent of uniformed
officers. Gay activists protesting the exclusion of official LGBT groups
held a news conference before the march to say they didn't think the
NYPD officers should participate in uniform.
About
two dozen gay rights advocates protested the parade holding placards
high enough for marchers to see. "If Danny Boy were gay, would he be
welcome today?" read one.
Protester Richard
Lynch wore a Guy Fawkes mask, which was popular among members of the
Occupy Wall Street movement. He said de Blasio should have ordered the
police commissioner not to march.
"This was a big mistake," Lynch said. "It says the mayor isn't serious about LGBT inclusion in this parade."
Across
the Atlantic in the land that inspired St. Patrick's Day, hundreds of
thousands of people crowded the center of Dublin for Ireland's major
parade. The hour-long procession featured loads of wit, brightly colored
costumes and dancers, including from Ireland's gay community - and
nobody had a public word to say about it.
For
the second year running, the parade included groups from Ireland's gay
rights groups, Dublin Pride and BeLonG To. Gay groups are a big part of
the Dublin community dance groups, which wear flamboyant outfits and
feature in each year's Dublin parade.
Boston's
new mayor, Martin Walsh, opted out of his city's parade Sunday after
talks broke down that would have allowed a gay veterans group to march.
Late last week, The Boston Beer Company, brewer of Samuel Adams, also
pulled its support.
The beer companies who
backed out of the parades in recent days - withdrawing their names from
events on a day frequently associated with alcohol-fueled revelry -
could signal a developing sense of supporting gay rights as a business
imperative, not just a matter of social values or politics, experts
said.
For example, some airlines, hotel
chains, telecommunications and other companies pressed Arizona Gov. Jan
Brewer to veto legislation that would have let businesses refuse service
to gays on religious ground; she did so last month.
"The
fact that we have gotten to a place where brands affirmatively pull out
of an event because of the non-participation of gay people is
definitely a measure of our progress as a community," said Fred Sainz, a
spokesman for Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT advocacy group.
Premium
beer brands in the U.S. market likely "want to be perceived as ahead of
the curve as opposed to retrograde," particularly by younger people,
who tend to be supportive of such gay rights issues as same-sex
marriage, said Patrick J. Egan, a political science professor at New
York University.
De Blasio's decision to skip
the parade underscores lingering political tensions over gay rights
issues in the United States. Kenny, however, refused to be sidelined,
saying he'd join the procession Monday in Manhattan because the holiday
is about Irishness, not sexuality.
Kenny,
Ireland's head of government, on Sunday became the first Irish prime
minister to attend Boston's annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast. He has
resisted pressure, in both Ireland and America, to support the gay
rights lobby's demand to have equal rights to participate in parades on
St. Patrick's Day.
Rain didn't stop the huge
St. Patrick's Day celebration in Savannah, Ga., though fewer revelers
lined Lafayette Square nearing the beginning of the city's parade route.
Thinner crowds left plenty of room for umbrellas and party tents as the
190-year-old parade stepped off under rainy skies in Georgia's oldest
city.
In Ireland, St. Patrick's Day provides
the launch of the country's annual push for tourism, a big part of the
rural economy. Virtually the entire Irish government left the Emerald
Isle for the holiday. Of the government's 28 ministers, 27 are overseas,
seeking to boost economic and cultural ties from Beijing to Buenos
Aires.
"To Irish people by birth or descent,
wherever they may be in the world, and to those who simply consider
themselves to be friends of Ireland, I wish each and every one of you a
happy, peaceful and authentically Irish St. Patrick's Day," Irish
President Michael D. Higgins, the ceremonial head of state and guest of
honor at Monday's parade in Dublin, said in a statement.
New
York's parade, a tradition that predates the city itself, draws more
than 1 million spectators and about 200,000 participants every March 17.
It has long been a mandatory stop on the city's political trail, and
includes marching bands, traditional Irish dancers and thousands of
uniformed city workers.
