So unsavory were the terms the South Boston “Allied War Veterans” offered to Mass Equality to participate in the St. Patrick’s Day parade that the organization has reemphasized its rejection of the so-called deal. http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/03/gay_advocates_no_st_patrick_s_day_parade_deal There had been intimations of a backlash against the statewide organization within the LGBT community for even entertaining the insulting offer that gays march in portable closets. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tell-Massequality-to-Reject-the-Backwards-St-Patricks-Day-Parade-Deal/644039885631243
The deal was never viable from an LGBT movement perspective. The idea that LGBT participants in the parade would be censored goes against everything we have fought for since Stonewall–“out of the closets and into the streets!” . But Mass Equality cannot be faulted for sitting down to a meeting with unrepentant homophobes–it was at the Mayor’s invitation. To his credit, Mayor Walsh has stopped pressuring LGBT folks to enter into an unacceptable non-compromise.that would resurrect the closet. .
Yet the negotiations opened Mass Equality and the LGBT community to some cheap shots from the homophobes who run the parade. The suggestion that the LGBT community could not field a contingent of veterans is execrable. At least the pretense of civility and decency was laid to rest when Wacko Hurley admitted to the Herald that he is a “bigot.”
One issue I have though is this characterization:
Fairly certain it was Mayor Walsh who was trying to pressure the Southie bigots into a compromise, and they offered their weak tea at the sit down which Mass Equality and other LGBT advocacy groups rightly rejected. If I am incorrect in this characterization you can feel free to correct me, I’d be disappointed if that was the case.
I am hopeful that next year he can lead the charge to have a city backed parade that doesn’t discriminate against anyone. The only votes he stands to lose are those of Wacko Hurley and his associates who might not even be around the next election.
by refusing to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. It means more to have an Irish Mayor rebuke the nasty “Allied War Veterans.”
Have it downtown on Tremont street past all the dead Brahmins in the Granary. It’ll serve to let them know who’s still in charge, will be far more accessible to public transit, easier to police, and will let everyone know that one bad neighborhood group can’t define a city or it’s sizable Irish community.
in all of this. I am so sick of this rancid bigotry, that I am planning to be out of state and miss the whole damn thing.
One thing about this whole bruhaha I’ve never quite understood is why LGBT groups feel it is so important to be able to march in THIS particular parade. Plenty of parades I’ve observed or participated in have not had such groups and I doubt it’s always because they are explicitly barred. I just feel like this is a case where both sides dig in their heels to make a point. Wouldn’t the energy of the LGBT community be better spent actually fighting for civil, economic, and constitutional rights, equal protection of the laws and such rather than insisting that they have to march in a stupid parade, which has zero impact on things that actually matter?
who felt strongly that they should have the right to celebrate both their identity and their heritage. While I was not part of that group, I salute them for their movement consciousness. There is progress in queering the spaces that are explicitly barred to us. And bigots deserve to be exposed and subjected to criticism.
…not inclined to muscle my way in where I’m not wanted. It’s a stupid exclusion, but I’d just move on and create my own event, and probably not invite Allied War Veterans to participate in Pride either:)
That’s what that really says to me. Bigotry doesn’t just have to be the Wacko Hurleys of the world, you don’t have to be one of those Westboro Baptist peeople… simply allowing them to do what they do unrebuked, going along with it, is another form of bigotry.
The civil rights movement would have went a lot faster if all the silent people who ‘didn’t want to muscle their way’ stopped being silent and actually got involved.
The LGBT civil rights movement is going so fast because straight allies think your approach is bad.
I just don’t get worked up about a private event the primary value of which is entertainment.
And I’m sure that’s what a lot of southerners thought when black people just had to sit at the front of the bus. The back of the bus was just as good, right Chris? Why’d they have to get all worked up about it, anyway? /sarcasm off
Can you see how utterly ridiculous and terrible your argument is now? Can you see the bigotry there? Silence is just another kind of bigotry.
…AND making sure whites took precedence over blacks. The bus seating arrangements were discrimination of services that effected people’s ability to go about their lives. Even if a black person were already sitting in the back of the bus, he or she would have to surrender that seat to a white person on demand. I see a distinction.
But I might add when looking over old parade pictures last night I saw more than a few that had the NAACP and the Catholic Interracial Council marching. Surely we have regressed from that era, particularly if gay rights are the singular civil rights issue of our time, surely they can march as marchers for justice did in the past. Nobody is arguing by the way Christopher that Hurley doesn’t have a right to be an asswipe, we are simply stating the city should quit aiding and abetting asswipes and maybe consider an alternative parade that can get official sanction to drown him out. He has a right to exclude people from his parade and we have a right to demand the city sponsor an inclusive one to drown that one out. Exclusion of gays shouldn’t define this city or it’s Irish Catholic community. And sadly it is until this parade dies a natural death or is supplanted.
Keep on digging…
…though I can see a strong argument for saying that only the city has a right to commandeer the streets for an event or at very least enacting a policy prohibiting discrimination in events the city must issue permits for to take over the streets and provide additional security.
Absolutely no one who has a parade go by their front door thinks of it as a “private” event and it is utterly ridiculous to describe it as such.
….and the public is invited. I was refering to sponsorship.
You called it a “private event” for “entertainment”. That is in no way an accurate characterization. The fact is that when a parade goes by your house you have no idea whether it was organized by the city or by some private group, especially when it is a parade that gives the appearances of including many groups from the community as this one does.
The fact that this is privately organized in no way makes their bigotry and exclusion something that we should just accept and ignore.
Most community parades, like medieval parades of guilds, seem to show off the many roles that together constitute the community. Hooray, the police! Hooray, the fire truck! Hooray, the high school band!
Full admission of LGBTers to the Irish community would therefore seem to include participation in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. This isn’t a matter of advocacy or campaigning, but merely acknowledged presence.
*
Saint Patrick’s Day Parades have a special community role in the Irish communities in the U.S. Exclusion is akin to shunning.
should demand to march.
That it happens to be one of the biggest parades of the year makes it all the more imperative for LGBT people to march.
It also happens to be about being part of a community. We’re here and we’re not going away.
1) This is the exact same argument that bigots have been making about any LGBT civil rights in the history of LGBT people fighting for civil rights.
2) Gay people can walk and chew gum at the same time.
3) I think it’s absolutely terrible for straight people to say these kinds of things. You don’t get to decide what’s important to us or ‘worth’ our time. Please don’t try — you’ll only offend people.
If you are going to fight against discrimination in employment, housing, marriage, etc. I’m right there with you. Regarding your first line I’m just not sure what it accomplishes and I don’t think choosing one’s battles is a bad thing. I don’t imagine it would be how I would primarily identify, but I guess that’s just me.
The right to march in their own community, just because they’re gay.
You think the bigots who continue to openly persecute should not only not be denounced, but get on tv because they’ll get good ratings?
Do you have any idea how hateful and hurtful these things are?
Any idea how shameful they are?
You are not any random person.
You are a member of the democratic state committee.
You are supposed to represent LGBT people and their rights and well being across the Greater Lowell.. not have views and opinions more in common with that other party’s platform.
With Karen Polito.
For shame, Christopher. For shame.
… to post at 2:49 a.m.
How many years have you been posting here? How about Christopher, how many years?
Your point is correct, but do you really need to act like you’ve discovered some closeted bigotry in the guy? Do you really need to call him a Republican?
As Atrios sometimes advises, “Be excellent to each other.”
So I have higher expectations.
I stand by my comments last night, which were not written haste.
And while I like Christopher as a person, I am not now nor ever going to tolerate any state party official who thinks banning gay people from a parade shouldn’t be fought against vigorously, and that in fact it’s acceptable to air that parade on tv.
That’s just not acceptable inside the democratic party I fight for every day and I seriously hope Christopher reconsiders.
Should he do so, I will gladly thank him and move on.
I think it’s a stupid policy and have said so many times. I don’t think it’s “OK”. I’m just trying to understand why this is the battle to choose when it seems to be such a low priority in the scheme of things. For the record, there is no requirement that DSC members all agree with each other or with every principle and tenet of the platform, though I’m pretty sure on gay rights, especially given what the other party just adopted, I’m still closer to Democrats by a long shot.
sometimes the battle chooses you.
Only in retrospect do we discover what acts were historic and what were “low priority.” Rosa Parks sat down because she was tired, not as part of some grand-marshal strategy to launch the Civil Rights Movement. But look what happened.
Personally, I have to resist the impulse to game everything out in my head and make judgments because I am prone to that. I’ve learned to be humble about my own strategic analyses and to respect the power of sincere acts.
In this case the bigots are more isolated than ever and the good guys have more friends. Not that this was necessarily the Grand Strategy, but it turned out well.
She probably was tired – but that is not why Rosa Parks sat down. She
was deeply involved in the civil rights movement and her sitting down was a specific strategy. There had been an earlier “try” but due to some persona; issues with the young woman who sat in the front of the bus – there was a strategic decision not to use her effort to launch a bus strike. Rosa Parks was secretary of the local NAACP chapter. http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-rosa-parks
Sometimes you need to take a premeditated step.
Jamie
I was too lazy to dig up confirming evidence.
The argument that goes “we have to choose our battles; set our priorities; not waste effort on small stuff.” The implication is that if we fight against a bigoted parade, some other, more important battle will go unfought. What it really means is that the speaker does not consider the parade a big deal, almost certainly because they are not personally affected. Based on many comments I’ve read here along the lines of “it doesn’t bother me,” I think that’s what’s happening here.
“This is wrong. This is terrible that in 2014, this is still going on.
I think it’s terrible that NECN would want to legitimize something like this by putting it on TV.”
That doesn’t seem very hard to me.
The 2nd I really don’t care about as much.
on this issue. Who are you trying to “not piss off”. Because right now, all I can see is that you are alienating several people who post here. So who are you trying to enlist to you side? I don’t get it. As a fellow former “Cardinal” of BG, I have been paying attention to your comments for several months now, and you seem to really being going out on a limb for this one issue.
I find it out of character in many ways, IMHO.
…and believe me, I very much think the worst behavior in this whole episode belongs to the organizers who could not have written a worse press release defending their policy if they tried. I just don’t know why this parade is being treated as some sort of holy grail, as if the LGBT community thinks that if only they can march in this parade all of their troubles will be over. Ironically, it gives this parade more attention than it probably deserves, IMO.
but you could just say it. saying it matters.
And because the parade is happening this coming week, not three years from now.
I do this too.
When it looked as if the U.S. were going to bomb Syria, I got caught a bit in cranking up the outrage as high as I could get it without going totally Godwin. The trouble is that that wasn’t terribly convincing.
Here too Christopher is asserting something that we disagree with, on an issue that can provoke serious outrage. One can either approach it from the outside, as it were, and characterize his comments as bigoted, etc. Or one can approach it from the inside, engage with its logic, where its attempts at being well-meaning have fallen rather off the track, and answer it. One always does the first with those immune to reason; one tends to prefer the second with friends and loved ones.
Now, it might be possible to shame someone out of an opinion but no one is going to admit to being shamed out of an opinion while the shaming is going on. In fact, the shaming provides a disincentive to change one’s views because then one has to admit that one has besmirched one’s character and reputation by taking on thoroughly disreputable views. So for the conversation right here, this week on BMG, it’s unlikely that that approach is going sway anyone in a perceptible fashion. Maybe a month from now, yes, a change of view might take place. So the back and forth could go on for a while.
Additionally, persuasion by humiliation is not particularly pleasant to watch, and those, like jimc, with gentler souls may even find the spectacle objectionable.
C’mon. It’s the most prominent parade in the city. Being banned from it is a thing that actually matters.
…I guess that contributes to answering the question on another thread about why NECN chooses to cover this one over the others.
That’s a chicken or the egg thing and nothing to do with my comment.
The point is it’s dehumanizing to exclude people based on who they are and it’s bizarre, bordering on bigoted, for you to begrudge people’s efforts to end this very high profile expression of prejudice.
The other thread about NECN coverage questioned its relative prominence when compared to other parades in the city.
What you seem determined not to understand is that people, especially younger people, are actually harmed by the exclusionary parade- and potentially quite severely. It is a certainty that there are gay young people growing up in southie (not to mention the adults living there) who are going to see the parade every year and see the pageantry and the fire trucks and everything and know that they are not welcome to be themselves and be part of it. Never mind around the state seeing the happy coverage. That can, and does, really harm a person.
Assuming one is not actually in favor of banning people from keystone annual events in Boston based on sexual orientation, begrudging and poo-pooing the efforts to end this can only come from a place of incredible privilege and a deep lack of empathy.
…it is my understanding that LGBT individuals are not banned, if they happen to be part of the fire, police contingents, etc. They just don’t want LGBT groups to march, just like they don’t want anti-war groups to march with them. If I’m wrong about my first statement then that is quite a bit worse than I thought.
how many times bigots have used that sort of argument to defend themselves against bigotry, from the military re: DADT to Chic Fil A to just about any right-wing activist.
They have no problems with gay people, so they’ll say, as long as they just shut up about it. No “flaunting it.” No “special privileges” that are actually just the same rights that everyone else has.
Not cool, Christopher. I find it deeply frustrating that you repeatedly display an unwillingness to try to think how other people are effecting by things.
Others in just this thread have called it privilege and a lack of empathy. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something.
The lives of gay kids and teenagers are deeply effecting by things like these — these groups have much higher suicide rates and homeless rates than the averages — try to show that you actually care.
…I’m not suggesting anyone stay in the closet, or otherwise “shut up about it”. I do care about things like suicide rates and take great offence to bullying on these grounds. It’s especially frustrating and outrageous when this is done in the name of religion and when some will twist the suicide rates you allude to into something that is somehow caused by sin or proof that the LGBT person is acknowledging his/her “sin”. Maybe I do have a bit of a discomfort with “flaunting”, but I assure you that comes from being prude rather than homophobic. I’m still not sure why this parade is the mountain on which the flag must be planted or how much it will help, though if I were the one running it I would not exclude.
My comment about flaunting actually probably doesn’t apply to this context since I’m mostly imagining in this case some people with rainbow flags and pro-equality signs, rather than the in-your-face demonstrations of years past that were barely family-friendly. I let you get me more worked up than I should have so I’m sorry about that.
There was nothing particularly “special” about the “Jockey Boy Restaurant” or a lunch counter Woolworths — except that only whites were allowed to eat there.
Jockey Boy Restaurant
Lunch counter at Woolworths
Those establishments weren’t targeted because blacks had nowhere else to eat. I guess the woman walking away in the lower picture decided she wasn’t hungry after all (read the caption in the photo) — no racism in her action, right?
Will you next be arguing in support of “separate but equal”?
…is much more egregious than deciding who can and cannot be in a parade, IMO.
…the whole reason I asked these questions is precisely because I don’t see this as rising to the level of lunch counters, or the Montgomery busses, schools, or other such accomodations. If people weren’t being served on account of their orientation that should be universally condemned, but apparently there are certain states that want to allow just that on some twisted theories of “religious liberty”.
some people take great pride in marching in parades, to show off the group they’re in. It’s also a way for groups to get out the word to the greater community that they’re there. Not being able to march is a denial in service when almost any other group is allowed to march.
If I read you correctly, you think this whole thing is an unnecessary. Further, that LGBT groups have better things to work on, and, so why bother upsetting people needlessly?
I suppose if this were a question, say, of better funding of the MBTA and advocates of that had been excluded from the parade, you might have a point. I think, though, you misunderstand the nature of movement to achieve LGBT equality.
The fundamental problem has been the view that gayness was somehow icky. How icky? So icky that it threatened eternal damnation to its participants, so icky that it threatened to draw the wrath of God down on nations that harbored it, so icky that it disgusts all decent people, so icky that you’d never want to be living next door to it.
The push to recognize gayness as non-icky, as something within the normal range of human behavior that can contribute something kind of neat to human society has actually been quite central to the gay rights movement. That’s why the exclusion from the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is not a minor thing.
It’s a central thing.
In acceptance is getting social equality. In a capitalist economy, economic equality from oppressed groups can be attained Booker T Washington style, political equality can be gained incrementally through courts, legislatures, protests, and civil actions Martin Luther King style, but social equality-where you get treated to the full measure of equality by other people, cultural equality-that requires a longer more concerted effort.
In a remarkable time, within my own (at 25 short) life span, we have seen a remarkable transformation in gay rights. From Teddy Kennedy voting for DOMA and Bill Clinton signing it in 96′, Ellen losing her show, teachers in liberal places like Lexington getting fired over their homosexuality in the 90s, to today’s great era. Hurley is a last bastion, a last fortress, and taking it down would be a tremendous victory. He has his freedom of speech, and so do we. And as Mill would argue, bigoted and ignorant speech will lose to reason every time in a free marketplace of ideas.
I’m all for private groups being allowed to ban whomever they want. God knows I’m not going to try and join the DAR anytime soon and I know why I’m not allowed. I don’t even care if the AOH or KofC don’t open up their doors to gays or stop engaging in conservative Catholic causes-all the more reason I don’t need to join them. Wacko Hurley and the boys want some Jamesons and Guinness in the backyard they can tell all the homophobic and racist jokes they want, I’m not invited and I don’t want to be. We aren’t talking about that.
We are talking about the biggest St. Patrick’s Day Parade outside of Ireland, one of the biggest political events (the breakfast) occurring right after, regional news coverage, police and fire department protection and participation, and basic city sanction and city services used for an event that is organized privately by a bunch of reactionary bigots. That letter might as well have blamed Communists and been written by Tailgunner Joe. So it’s a very public event using public funds attended by public officials.
Walsh organizing a downtown parade where anyone can march, preventing police and firefighters from marching in the Southie parade, and letting Hurley march literally in front of his neighbors while the cameras and sponsors go elsewhere would be a great and welcome change.
Veterans For Peace have one to which all are welcome and I believe follows the same route. The separate but equal imagery is unfortunate, but I know a fair amount of people who are taking advantage of the opportunity.