Q Toon: Parade Downgrade

The LGBTQAIXYZ community's fight to be included in St. Patrick's Day parades goes back longer than that unwieldy acronym does. For the most part, we seem to have worn down the resistance.

But not everywhere. Organizers of the Staten Island march barred the island's Pride Center from their parade last week, reportedly adding that even the Prime Minister of Ireland, Leo Varadkar (who is openly gay) would not be allowed in their event if he displayed any "visual association with LGBT identity."

So let's just posit that the Staten Island parade is not among "all of the best St. Patrick's Day parades."

In Dublin, Galway, Cork and other Irish cities, gay and lesbian groups march in St. Patrick’s Day events without incident. Chicago, which has a large Irish Catholic population, has allowed gay groups since the mid-1990s. “Our city realized a long time ago that we have so much more in common than apart,” says Tom Tunney, Chicago’s first openly gay alderman. “We’re a city of cultures, and the LGBT community is a part of it.”

Boston's St. Pat's organizers allowed an LGBTQ group to parade with them in 2014, 2015, and 2016, only to ban them again last year. But after the resulting backlash, they are letting the LGBTQ marchers back in this year.

New York's Fifth Street parade banned LGBTQ participation until 2015, when they granted a permit to Out@NBCUniversal, the LGBTQ resource group of the network televising their parade. They were joined by the Lavender and Green Alliance the following year, thanks to pressure from Guinness, Sam Adams and Heineken. (And from Mayor DiBlasio, too, but I don't need to tell you whether beer or a politician is more important to St. Patrick's Day festivities.)

Now, I don't know for sure that, if mercurial American President Trump's dream of tanks and missiles parading down Pennsylvania Avenue comes to fruition, there won't be some group of LGBTQ soldiers or veterans demanding a float of their own.

I wasn't really privy to the last Homosexual Agenda Steering Cabal meeting. And if I were, I couldn't tell you.