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MARCH 10, 2019, BROOKLYN WEEKLY
March turns a corner
Bklyn St. Patrick’s Day Parade formally welcomes fi rst LGBTQ participants BY COLIN MIXSON
Organizers of the borough’s eponymous
St. Patrick’s Day parade
this year will formally welcome
local LGBTQ marchers for the
fi rst time in the procession’s 44-
year history — a historic change
for the event that excluded those
communities for too long, according
to a longtime Irish-American
LGBTQ advocate.
“It is ground breaking, it is
historic, it is a huge moment,”
said Brendan Fay, the founder of
advocacy group the Lavender and
Green Alliance, whom police previously
arrested for protesting the
local march, and who for decades
has advocated for more inclusive
St. Patrick’s Day parades across
the fi ve boroughs.
Leaders of the Brooklyn Irish
LGBTQ Organization announced
on Feb. 26 that parade organizers
accepted their group as one of dozens
of entities that will march in
the March 17 procession through
Park Slope , encouraging supportive
Organization
locals of all genders and sexual
orientations to walk beside them
LGBTQ as they take to the streets without
rish fear of arrest.
I “For many years, people
Brooklyn within the LGBTQ community
had to separate from their identities
to march in the parade,” said
Lisa Fane, a co-founder of the local
Irish LGBTQ organization.
“We’re proud of our LGBTQ history
and we feel this has been
missing in the parade.”
Brooklyn St. Patrick’s Day Parade
organizers’ decision to welcome
more diverse participants
comes years after leaders of the
city’s St. Paddy’s Day march
through Manhattan invited Fay’s
alliance to join that procession in
2015 , but as stagers of other borough
based processions, including
the March 3 Staten Island St.
Patrick’s Day parade , continue to
Fay formally exclude LGBTQ marchers.
Brendan And the opportunity for LGBTQ
Brooklynites to openly celebrate
their Irish heritage, and their sexual
and gender identities, is a huge
victory for advocates — especially
Fay, who said he was heartbroken
when cops cuffed him along with
seven others for “parading without
a permit” after they slipped
into the ranks of the 1999 Brooklyn
St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
“To be Irish and arrested for
seeking to celebrate Irish heritage
HISTORIC MOMENT: (Top) Members of the Brooklyn Irish LGBTQ organization joined Park Slope Assemblyman Robert Carroll, third from right, to show off their Irish
and rainbow fl ags ahead of their formal appearance in this year’s Brooklyn St. Patrick’s Day Parade. (Bottom left) Irish LGBTQ activist Brendan Fay, second from left,
and other members of the Lavender and Green Alliance protested the group’s exclusion from the 1999 march, for which cops cuffed them — an arrest that (bottom
right) made headlines in our sister publication the Brooklyn Paper’s now-defunct Park Slope Paper at the time.
and culture with your community
was devastating,” he said.
The local Irish LGBTQ group
formed by Fane and Matthew Mc-
Morrow, both of whom live in Park
Slope, fi led its application to appear
in this year’s parade — which will
step off 20 years after the march
where police arrested Fay — after
spending two years building a
coalition of supporters, including
local Assemblyman Robert Carroll
(D–Park Slope), whose grandfather
John Carroll co-founded the
annual Kings County Celtic procession
back in 1975.
And organizers of the event
— who met with Carroll and the
Brooklyn Irish LGBTQ Organization’s
leaders several times
last month, after receiving the
formal application in January —
ultimately approved, according
to Fane, who said getting them
to agree to diversify the parade
didn’t require too much persuasion
after recent changes to other
marches.
Brendan Fay