St Patrick’s Day Expulsions: Race and Homophobia in New York’s Parade

Abstract

When the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) applied to march in the New York St Patrick’s Day Parade of 1991, they were told that there was no room by the organizers of the parade, the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH). ILGO’s ongoing struggle for inclusion in what was then the world’s largest celebration of Irish ethnicity became a major news item that rumbled on seasonally for a number of years across the USA, in Ireland, in the international gay community and amongst the international Irish diaspora. Now, fifteen years after its first application to join the parade, ILGO is even legally prohibited from holding a protest at its own exclusion. The unquestioned assumption that being homosexual is antithetical to being Irish provided the fundamental premise from which it was successfully argued in US courts that the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization is a violent, obscene enemy bent on the destruction of Irish ethnicity and Irish communities. The argument was not made initially by lawyers employed by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, but by the influential American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which describes itself as working ‘to extend rights to segments of our population that have traditionally been denied their rights, including Native Americans and other people of color; lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people’.¹