NYC council leader marches on St. Patrick's Day _ in Dublin
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press Writer
March 17, 2007, 12:22 PM EDT
DUBLIN, Ireland -- New York Council Speaker Christine Quinn finally marched Saturday in a St. Patrick's Day parade _ and it took her just 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) to do it.
Quinn, the first openly homosexual leader of New York City Council, has boycotted the New York parade for years because of the organizers' refusal to let gays and lesbian groups march.
This year, she accepted an Irish government invitation to join the Dublin City Council contingent here _ and highlight the big differences between the parades in Ireland and New York.
"The fact I'm here in Dublin and able to march and participate in inclusive events should send a message of how backwards the New York parade is," said Quinn, who is the city's second-most powerful politician behind Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a likely 2009 mayoral candidate.
The New York parade has been bedeviled for years by chronic bickering between its conservative organizers, the Ancient Order of Hibernians fraternal group, and New York's legion of special interest groups, particularly gay and lesbian groups.
After being elected speaker last year, Quinn suggested that the Hibernians should permit homosexual activists the right to march behind the New York City council banner, rather than their own. Her plan would have allowed people to wear gay rights buttons or sashes _ but the New York parade's chairman, John Dunleavy, said no.
"John Dunleavy obviously isn't interested in compromise," Quinn said. "Last year he said allowing gays and lesbians into the parade would be the equivalent of letting the Ku Klux Klan march in a civil rights parade or the Nazis march in an Israeli Day parade.
"But he only represents a very small minority of people in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, so we eventually will get beyond this," she said. "The vast majority of AOH members, like the vast majority of Irish New Yorkers, are open-minded."
Quinn marched alongside her partner Kim Catullo, father Lawrence _ who hails from Schull, County Cork, southwest Ireland _ four fellow New York council members, and her Dublin City Council hosts.
They carried green-lettered "New York City Council" signs decorated with shamrocks and pink triangles, a gay-rights symbol.
Before the parade Quinn met Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, leader of Dublin's 1 million Catholics. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern greeted her at the main stand for dignitaries on Dublin's major boulevard, O'Connell Street. She got passing cheers from New York Fire Department and police bomb-squad members who were marching alongside their Irish counterparts, and groups of regular New Yorkers among the 500,000-strong crowd.
Officials at the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network in Ireland said they were thrilled with Quinn's visit and hoped it would spur change across the Atlantic.
"The New York parade is not in any way reflective of modern Ireland," said Eoin Collins, spokesman for the group. "The Irishness being celebrated in Dublin today is a celebration where anyone is welcome."
In Dublin, he said, "there would be nothing to stop a gay group having a float. We just didn't get it together." However a well-known Dublin drag queen, "Miss Panty," did perform atop one float.
Homosexuality was officially a crime in Ireland until 1993, but attitudes have rapidly changed as the power of the Catholic Church waned throughout the 1990s. Dublin has a council-backed Gay Pride parade through the city center each June.
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