New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio was to become the first mayor in decades on Monday to miss the city's traditional St. Patrick's Day parade over a dispute involving whether march participants can carry pro-gay signs. But Ireland's prime minister said he'll join the procession because the holiday is about "Irishness and not about sexuality".
De Blasio's decision to skip the parade underscores lingering political tensions over gay rights issues. Boston Mayor Martin Walsh stayed out of his city's parade on Sunday after talks broke down that would have allowed a gay group to march.
Still, thousands of green-clad spectators came out to watch bagpipers and marchers in Boston. A similar scene played out in downtown Philadelphia.
Other cities, including Montreal, also hosted festivities over the weekend, and throughout the world, landmarks were bathed in green floodlights.
Ireland's head of government, Enda Kenny, became the first Irish prime minister to attend Boston's annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast on Sunday.
Kenny has resisted pressure, in both Ireland and North America, to support the gay rights lobby's demand to have equal rights to participate in parades on St. Patrick's Day.
"The St. Patrick's Day parade (in New York) is a parade about our Irishness and not about sexuality, and I would be happy to participate in it," he said in Dublin before leaving for a six-day trip to the US.
In Ireland, St. Patrick's Day provides the launch of the country's annual push for tourism, a big part of the rural economy.
"To Irish people by birth or descent, wherever they may be in the world, and to those who simply consider themselves to be friends of Ireland, I wish each and every one of you a happy, peaceful and authentically Irish St. Patrick's Day," Irish President Michael D. Higgins, the guest of honor at Monday's parade in Dublin, said in a statement.
New York's parade, a tradition that predates the city itself, draws more than 1 million spectators and about 200,000 participants every March 17.
Parade organizers in New York have said gay groups are not prohibited from marching, but are not allowed to carry gay-friendly signs or identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
Some LGBT groups intended to protest the parade along its route on Fifth Avenue on Monday. Others had planned to dump Guinness beer from the shelves of the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the gay rights movement, to protest the brewer's plan to sponsor the parade, but that demonstration was canceled late Sunday after Guinness said in a statement that it had dropped its sponsorship.
|
Above: Gay rights advocates prepare to march in an equality parade immediately after the annual South Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade in Boston on Sunday. Left: The famous Badaling section of the Great Wall in Beijing is lit by green lights in the early hours of Monday to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Badaling is on the list of global landmarks that are lit with green lights to celebrate the traditional Irish holiday. Reuters, Provided to China Daily |
(China Daily 03/18/2014 page10)
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263 Registration Number: 130349 
