September 18, 2014
Bill Donohue speaks to the latest attempts to control the
New York St. Patrick's Day Parade:
The parade committee's decision to allow a cherry-picked NBC gay unit to march
in the 2015 parade has triggered an onslaught of applications from other gay
groups, as well as new attempts to wrest control of the parade.
These efforts were given more fuel when parade committee vice chairman John
Lahey, president of Quinnipiac
University, announced
that he was "enthusiastic" about sitting down with Brendan Fay to
discuss his interest in marching in 2016. Fay is a gay activist who was an
official in DignityUSA, a radical dissident Catholic gay group that works to
undermine the Church. He says he is married to a man.
Applying to march in the 2015 parade are Irish Queers, St. Pat's for All, the
Lavender and Green Alliance, and gay groups within established non-gay
organizations. Also, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announced on Monday that
it has applied to march.
HRC is the nation's largest gay group, one that is highly critical of the
Church's teachings on sexuality. In July, it berated the New York Giants
because it hired David Tyree to be its new Director of Player Development (he
is the Giants' hero in the 2007 Super Bowl). Tyree's crime? He supports
marriage as the union between a man and a woman. HRC has also lashed out at
Francis Cardinal George for defending what it considers the Church's
"discriminatory" policies against homosexuals. It is important to
note that one of HRC's biggest sponsors is Diageo, owner of Guinness; it is a
"Platinum Partner."
On another front, attempts are being made by gay activists, left-wing groups,
and gay politicians to wrest control of the parade permit from the parade
committee. They are pressuring New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to give them the
permit, but so far their efforts have failed. This is just the beginning—look
for more attempts to crash the parade over the next six months