Parade proceeds amid tension over gay rights

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio was to become the first mayor in decades on Monday to miss the city's traditional St. Patrick's Day parade over a dispute involving whether march participants can carry pro-gay signs. But Ireland's prime minister said he'll join the procession because the holiday is about "Irishness and not about sexuality".

De Blasio's decision to skip the parade underscores lingering political tensions over gay rights issues. Boston Mayor Martin Walsh stayed out of his city's parade on Sunday after talks broke down that would have allowed a gay group to march.

Still, thousands of green-clad spectators came out to watch bagpipers and marchers in Boston. A similar scene played out in downtown Philadelphia.

Other cities, including Montreal, also hosted festivities over the weekend, and throughout the world, landmarks were bathed in green floodlights.

Ireland's head of government, Enda Kenny, became the first Irish prime minister to attend Boston's annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast on Sunday.

Kenny has resisted pressure, in both Ireland and North America, to support the gay rights lobby's demand to have equal rights to participate in parades on St. Patrick's Day.

"The St. Patrick's Day parade (in New York) is a parade about our Irishness and not about sexuality, and I would be happy to participate in it," he said in Dublin before leaving for a six-day trip to the US.

In Ireland, St. Patrick's Day provides the launch of the country's annual push for tourism, a big part of the rural economy.

"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 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.

Parade organizers in New York have said gay groups are not prohibited from marching, but are not allowed to carry gay-friendly signs or identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

Some LGBT groups intended to protest the parade along its route on Fifth Avenue on Monday. Others had planned to dump Guinness beer from the shelves of the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the gay rights movement, to protest the brewer's plan to sponsor the parade, but that demonstration was canceled late Sunday after Guinness said in a statement that it had dropped its sponsorship.

(China Daily 03/18/2014 page10)