By Khaled AlSenan, News Correspondent
On January 29, MassEquality received notice that their application to join the March 17 St. Patrick’s Day Parade in South Boston was denied, marking the nineteenth year in a row that parade organizers have banned LGBT advocacy groups from participating. The Boston parade, which first began in 1737, is a staple of St. Patrick’s Day, a day in which Irish heritage and the contributions of Irish-Americans are celebrated.
The 1995 US Supreme Court decision Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, supports the legal basis behind the organizers’ actions in excluding the grassroots organization that lobbies against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Under that landmark decision, private citizens organizing a public demonstration have the right to exclude groups whose messages they disagree with from participating.
Parade organizers declined to respond to any inquires regarding their decision, but in a letter to the Boston Globe published last month, they explained their position on LGBT involvement in the parade.
“We don’t know who’s gay in the parade, and we don’t ban gay people,” parade organizer Phillip Wuschke wrote .”We ban gay demonstrations, people that are sending out the wrong messages, messages that we don’t agree with. It’s not that type of parade. They have their own parade. Ours is a day of celebration, not demonstration.”
LGBT activists were quick to denounce Wuschke’s rhetoric and attitude towards their community.
“Since when does being open and proud of being an LGBTQ person in Boston send the ‘wrong message’?” Kara Coredini, the executive director of MassEquality, said to the Globe. “It’s stunning that in 2014, a high-profile cultural institution like the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade would force LGBTQ people to retreat back into the closet in order to participate.”
While Coredini acknowledged that the ability to participate openly in a parade may seem inconsequential in the face of more dire issues, she worries this attitude towards the LGBT community might crystallize in a toxic environment that perpetuates discrimination, rejection, and violence.
“Rejection by their families is why 57 percent of transgender people attempt suicide and why up to 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBTQ,” she also said to the Globe. “Rejection is also why the mere fact of being an openly LGBTQ person results in higher stress and poorer health.”
According to the Globe article, Coredini cited a study by the Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which indicated that rejection by fellow students is why LGBT students are twice as likely to skip school and four times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual peers.
Backlash against the organizers’ stance has come from all over. Bill de Blasio, the newly elected mayor of New York City, announced that he will boycott Manhattan’s edition of the parade. Disapproving of their exclusion of a minority group, the mayor will instead participate in other events that honor the Irish heritage of New York City.
Suzanna Walters, the director of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at Northeastern, said she wishes to see a similar sentiment from public figures of Boston, including the newly elected mayor, Martin J. Walsh.
“If we can’t fight their exclusion in the Supreme Court, I do think we can continue to fight the exclusion in the court of public opinion,” she said. “I wish our new mayor had the same integrity as the mayor of New York City.”
In spite of Massachusetts’ identity as a liberal state with a historic record of pro-gay laws, including enacting the first piece of legalization in favor of same-sex marriage in the United States, Professor Walters cautioned residents against the delusion that homophobia is simply a thing of the past.
“I do think there is a kind of ‘Massachusetts bubble’ that we think we live in here,” Walters said. “We often mistake basic civil rights for substantive and robust civic inclusion. We’re not there yet, in Massachusetts or any other state.”
Joe Latina, a middler neuroscience major at Northeastern, questioned the validity of the conservative values that parade organizers seek to uphold by their exclusion of LGBT groups.
“The one parade I attended was an amassing of college kids, many of which underage, getting drunk on a Sunday afternoon while tax-dollar employed police officers inspected cups haphazardly,” he said. “Yes, the parade is a celebration, but it is also a demonstration of the organizers’ own values, and from what I saw, a fraternity party masquerading as a parade does not align with the group’s conservative ideals either.”
