March 2, 2015

Read at CityLimits.org

Excerpt:

…de Blasio says he’ll honor the long-running boycott of the St. Patrick’s Day parade this year unless it becomes “more inclusive.” That’s a welcome announcement, and will help keep pressure on the parade to finally admit Irish LGBT groups. The parade organizers are seriously committed to exclusion: Even last year, when the loss of corporate sponsorships finally forced a reckoning, they still couldn’t bring themselves to talk with the handful of Irish LGBT groups who want to march. Instead, they cut a deal with another sponsor, NBC, to let their gay employees join the parade. (The move has been widely denounced as a cheap trick.)

De Blasio’s boycott alone may not be enough to end the discrimination, but he has the authority to do even more. The question of how to deal with the anti-gay parade has long been muddied by a 1993 court case refiguring it as a private, anti-gay Catholic procession. The mayor’s boycott of the parade obscures another problem: City Hall has long supported the parade organizers’ exclusion…