A new gay-friendly St. Patrick’s Day parade is coming to Staten Island

This year, for the first time, Staten Island will host a St. Patrick’s Day parade in which LGBTQ delegations can participate, a move that ends a years-long dispute between gay groups and parade organizers across the city over who gets to be in the may participate publicly. celebrations of the patron saint of both Ireland and Catholic New York.

The original Staten Island parade was the last vestige in a culture war conflict that for many New Yorkers had felt settled for a decade.

The ban on LGBTQ groups in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan was lifted in 2014. But organizers of the Staten Island parade have insisted that gay groups have no place at an event for a Catholic saint. That led to years of bitter debates and boycotts.

To resolve that disagreement, Mayor Eric Adams’ office announced Thursday that the city’s least populous and most conservative neighborhood would now host two St. Patrick’s Day parades: the existing parade, held March 2, and a new parade open to LGBTQ groups that will take place on March 17.

Kayla Mamelak, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said the Adams administration believed that “celebrations in our city should be welcoming and inclusive.”

Ms. Mamelak said the new parade would be organized by the Staten Island Business Outreach Center, a nonprofit community development organization. Mr. Adams will attend the new St. Patrick’s Day parade, his office said.

“Anyone who is interested – regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, race or beliefs – is welcome to march together,” Ms Mamelak said.

In a statement, the business center said the new event, which it called the Forest Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade, would “not only increase the vibrancy of our community, but also serve as a shining example of unity for the entire city.”

The group said it hoped all New Yorkers would “join us in embracing this renewed tradition.”

Mr. Adams has boycotted the Staten Island parade since taking office. His predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, also boycotted the parade, as did nearly all Democratic elected officials in the New York region and several Republicans on Staten Island.

The Manhattan parade, held on March 16, is a major public event, attracting an estimated 150,000 demonstrators and two million spectators annually. It is the oldest and largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world.

The Staten Island parade is a much smaller affair, drawing a crowd of thousands rather than millions. But it remains an important event for local families and businesses, and LGBTQ groups in the borough said their exclusion from it was painful.

For years, Carol Bullock, the executive director of Staten Island’s Pride Center, applied to participate in the parade with her group but was turned away. When the new organizers invited the group to participate, her response was “yes, yes,” she said.

“I am so happy that we have brought this parade back for the Staten Island community,” said Ms. Bullock. “I will finally march down Forest Avenue with my staff, my board, our supporters and our banner and celebrate our Irish heritage.”

Critics of the Staten Island parade have taken issue not only with its policies toward LGBTQ groups, but also with the sometimes aggressive methods it has used to enforce those policies.

In 2020, parade organizers excluded individual participants from the event and even physically turned people away based on what they perceived as their sympathy for gay and transgender people. Among those barred from marching were Madison L’Insalata, who came out as bisexual after being crowned Miss Staten Island, and a Republican City Council member who wore a rainbow flag lapel pin.

The Staten Island parade’s lead organizer, Larry Cummings, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. But he has spoken bluntly about the parade in the past to newspapers serving Staten Island and the Irish diaspora.

“Our parade is for Irish heritage and culture,” Mr Cummings said told The Irish Voicea New York City newspaper, in 2018. “It’s not a political or sexual identification parade.”

And in 2020, he rebuked The Staten Island Advance for continuing coverage of the parade controversy.

“Here’s the deal: It’s a non-sexual identification parade and that’s that. No, they are not marching,” he said. “Try not to keep asking a million damn questions, okay?”