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Remark About Gays Shadows St. Pat's Parade
NEW YORK - Protesters joined bagpipers, marching bands and thousands of flag-waving spectators at the St. Patrick's Day parade Friday after the parade's chairman compared gay Irish-American activists to neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and prostitutes.
As huge, happy crowds lined the streets, the chairman, John Dunleavy, sidestepped questions about his remarks to The Irish Times.
"Today is St. Patrick's Day. We celebrate our faith and heritage, everything else is secondary," he said before the start of the Fifth Avenue parade.
Dunleavy set off a firestorm this week when he told the newspaper: "If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow Neo-Nazis into their parade? If African Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?"
Referring to the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, Dunleavy said, "People have rights. If we let the ILGO in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?"
On Thursday, Christine Quinn, the City Council's first openly gay leader, blasted Dunleavy for the comments. Quinn, who is Irish, declined to participate in the parade after organizers barred an Irish gay and lesbian group from marching under its own banner for a 16th straight year.
The city's parade, with 150,000 marchers, is the nation's oldest and largest.
Scores of bagpipers, high school bands and Irish societies streamed past crowds waving Irish flags or wearing green hats, green carnations or green shamrocks painted on their faces.
Spectator Mary Sweeney, who moved to New York from Ireland 15 years ago with her two daughters, said, "I want them to grow up knowing their Irish heritage. Everyone wants to be Irish today."
Police on scooters positioned themselves between the marchers and scores of gay-rights protesters, who chanted: "We can march in Dublin, we can march in Cork, why can't we march in New York?"
Also barred from the parade was the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, which lobbies on behalf of undocumented Irish immigrants in the United States.
Savannah, Ga., meanwhile, hosted what's touted as the nation's second-largest St. Patrick's parade, with 300,000 or more visitors expected in a city that just 150,000 people call home.
Thousands in green shirts, wigs, bowler hats and Mardi Gras-style beads packed the magnolia-lined sidewalks — standing seven-deep in spots — and spilled outside the doors of bars shortly after they opened at 7 a.m. Temperatures in the 70s helped fill the streets.
"It's like Times Square in New York on a busy day," Matthew Faumuina, 21, of Bluffton, S.C., said while filling his cooler with ice and beer. "I didn't know this many people could even fit in Savannah."
Remark About Gays Shadows St. Pat's Parade
NEW YORK - Protesters joined bagpipers, marching bands and thousands of flag-waving spectators at the St. Patrick's Day parade Friday after the parade's chairman compared gay Irish-American activists to neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and prostitutes.
As huge, happy crowds lined the streets, the chairman, John Dunleavy, sidestepped questions about his remarks to The Irish Times.
"Today is St. Patrick's Day. We celebrate our faith and heritage, everything else is secondary," he said before the start of the Fifth Avenue parade.
Dunleavy set off a firestorm this week when he told the newspaper: "If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow Neo-Nazis into their parade? If African Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?"
Referring to the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, Dunleavy said, "People have rights. If we let the ILGO in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?"
On Thursday, Christine Quinn, the City Council's first openly gay leader, blasted Dunleavy for the comments. Quinn, who is Irish, declined to participate in the parade after organizers barred an Irish gay and lesbian group from marching under its own banner for a 16th straight year.
The city's parade, with 150,000 marchers, is the nation's oldest and largest.
Scores of bagpipers, high school bands and Irish societies streamed past crowds waving Irish flags or wearing green hats, green carnations or green shamrocks painted on their faces.
Spectator Mary Sweeney, who moved to New York from Ireland 15 years ago with her two daughters, said, "I want them to grow up knowing their Irish heritage. Everyone wants to be Irish today."
Police on scooters positioned themselves between the marchers and scores of gay-rights protesters, who chanted: "We can march in Dublin, we can march in Cork, why can't we march in New York?"
Also barred from the parade was the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, which lobbies on behalf of undocumented Irish immigrants in the United States.
Savannah, Ga., meanwhile, hosted what's touted as the nation's second-largest St. Patrick's parade, with 300,000 or more visitors expected in a city that just 150,000 people call home.
Thousands in green shirts, wigs, bowler hats and Mardi Gras-style beads packed the magnolia-lined sidewalks — standing seven-deep in spots — and spilled outside the doors of bars shortly after they opened at 7 a.m. Temperatures in the 70s helped fill the streets.
"It's like Times Square in New York on a busy day," Matthew Faumuina, 21, of Bluffton, S.C., said while filling his cooler with ice and beer. "I didn't know this many people could even fit in Savannah."
