Two
candidates for a state Senate seat representing South Boston called Friday for
the inclusion of gay and lesbian groups in the neighborhood’s annual St.
Patrick’s Day parade, but the parade’s organizer said there are no plans to
change its policies barring those groups.
Maureen
Dahill, a Democrat and fourth-generation South Boston resident, and state
Representative Linda Dorcena Forry, a Dorchester Democrat, released statements
Friday saying the time has come to welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender groups into the parade organized by the Allied War Veterans
Council.
“I
know this [controversy] has been going on since the mid-’90s, and I just feel
like now is the time,” Dahill, 43, said by phone Friday. “South Boston is a
wonderful and inclusive neighborhood, and I feel like the parade should
reflect that.”
Dorcena
Forry, a Haitian-American who is married to Irish-American journalist Bill
Forry, said this issue has kept her out of the parade for the eight years she
has served on Beacon Hill, but she would like to be able to march with their
four half-Irish children.
“I
go to the breakfast every year; I just do not march in the parade,” Dorcena
Forry, 39, said, referring to the annual political breakfast that for the past
11 years has been hosted by former state senator John A. Hart Jr.
‘It’s just that it’s not that type of a parade.’
Dorcena
Forry, Dahill, and state Representative Nick Collins are competing to fill the
First Suffolk District Senate seat recently vacated when Hart took a job at a
law firm.
Collins,
a South Boston Democrat, could not be reached for comment Friday night.
“I
have never walked because it has not been inclusive,” Dorcena Forry said. “I’ve
always taken that stand. I’m hopeful and I have faith that the parade committee
will really do the right thing.”
A
spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he, too, chooses not to participate
in the parade because of the policy against gay groups. But she also pointed to
a 1995 ruling by the US Supreme Court that said organizers have the right to
choose who marches.
“It’s
a private parade,” said Dot Joyce, Menino’s spokeswoman. “The mayor has made his
statement very clear. He does not march in that parade, but the Supreme Court
has ruled on that parade.”
Philip
J. Wuschke Jr., organizer of the parade for the past three years, said lesbians
and gay men are welcome to march as individuals and as members of other groups,
but the event is a celebration and not a political demonstration.
“Gay
and lesbian people have been walking in the parade since the beginning of the
parade itself,” Wuschke, 47, said Friday. “They just don’t come out holding a
sign.
“It
isn’t that gay and lesbian people are banned; it’s just that it’s not that type
of a parade,” he added.
Wuschke
cited the Supreme Court ruling and said he has turned away other groups,
including white supremacists, who hoped to use the parade as a vehicle for
political agendas.
“There
is a day — I think the parade is in July — that they go out and they have their
march,” he said of Boston Pride, the annual celebration for gay groups. “I
mean, why keep picking on this parade? I just don’t know.”
Dahill,
who founded and edits the Caught in Southie website, said for her the issue is
personal. She has many lesbian and gay supporters, she said, as well as a
brother who is gay.
This
year, she would like to march alongside her brother, she said, knowing that he
and his community are welcome.
“Why
not?” Dahill said. “It’s 2013. It’s a different time. It’s the perfect time, I
feel like.”
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeremycfox.--
Cole Harrison
Executive Director
Massachusetts Peace Action
11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA
02138
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617-466-9274 m
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