Green with Pride — Let the Gays March for St. Patrick’s Day
Everyone Should Get to Celebrate Ireland. Bigotry is the only thing which should be banned at a St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
Like many people born in Ireland, I watch with fascination as the world turns green in every sense to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Ireland, this small nation adrift in the Atlantic, is front and center on the world stage. Every man, woman and child is Irish on March 17th.
St. Patrick’s Day is a keen reminder of our nation’s influence, and importantly, our shared history. But Irish people here never take kindly to a fuss being made. So the pageantry we see on our TV screens or on social media of the day’s celebrations— well, we find it amusing.
But what I don’t find all that amusing is promoting exclusion in our name. Using the Irish cultural identity, which owes so much to immigration, hospitality and togetherness, and weaponizing it against minorities.
Bigotry is one of thee most anti-Irish things you can be.
Irish gay people exist — fact.
In a country who has been systemically under Catholic influence since it’s creation, social changes in Ireland have been monumental.
We were the first nation to introduce same-sex marriage through popular public vote. Imagine, supporting the gays? Years later we repealed restraining abortion legislation.
As a gay Irish man, born and bread here, who speaks the Irish language (almost fluently), I’ve always thought Ireland is a small nation who continues to punch above their own weight on many social issues and changes.
So the idea a cohort of organizers, based on celebrating Irish identity and heritage, are somehow rattled by gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people is perplexing. After all, if Ireland embraces diversity, why not ‘Irish’ people?
I am of course alluding to the recent New York Times piece explaining how still, there is a St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York who still bans L.G.B.T. groups.
To read that this sort of censorship of people’s identity still runs amok every March continues to stun me. And in Ireland’s name?
I think not.
Plastic doesn’t shine like an emerald
We have a tongue in cheek term to describe people who say “I’m Irish” at the drop of a hat — when in fact, they’re anything but. We call them ‘Plastic Paddys’.
Often I’ve been talking to people on holidays who, in the thickest American accent possible, also tell me they are Irish.
“Oh?! Okay. Where are you from exactly?” I ask.
“Texas”
“So you’re American, then?”
“No, I’m Irish. Like you!”
While these exchanges are common, and indeed innocent and cute (I can’t police who is or isn’t Irish after all), the ban on including people to march for Irish pride annoys me.
So while Americans, or indeed many people across the world, can list off where and who their ancestors from the Famine times of 1845, they can’t recognise what Ireland now stands for.
Diversity. Friendship. Culture.
To the organizers of a St. Patrick’s Day parade, who bans people from their celebrations on the basis of their sexuality, all the while still claiming to celebrate their ancestor’s heritage— I have but one, solitary, gay gif for you…
