Never mind who's in the St Patrick's Day parade in Manhattan, the key question is who has been left out, writes Seán O'Driscoll in New York.
St Patrick's Day parades in greater New York - green beer, police marching bands, county associations, Irish dancers, junket-loving government ministers - it's all a bit predictable. The real story this year is not who's taking part, but who's being left out.
For a start, a group of Irish dwarfs has been banned from the Belmar parade in New Jersey for being too drunk last year. Meanwhile, in Morristown, New Jersey, the local bishop is leading a campaign against the inclusion of the National Organisation for Women (Now) in the parade.
In Manhattan, the parade continues to ban gay groups because they are "anti-Catholic". In Woodside, Queens, where gay groups set up their own parade, the local anarchist marching band refused to march in the Manhattan parade because it excludes gays. The first openly gay speaker of New York city council, Christine Quinn, is also boycotting the Manhattan parade, as is author Frank McCourt, who noted that if you threw a bomb among the leaders of the Manhattan parade, you would kill "the cream of Irish mediocrity". His brother Malachy, dressed in an outlandish Tricolour hat for last Sunday's pro-gay Woodside parade, is even running for governor on the Green Party ticket to raise awareness of the anti-gay discrimination. Meanwhile, the Manhattan parade banned the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, the largest and most active Irish lobby group in the US, because it is too much of an "advocacy" group.
IT'S DOUBTFUL THE US Supreme Court had any idea what it was unleashing when it ruled in Hurley V Irish Lesbian and Gay Organisation 11 years ago that St Patrick's Day parades could exclude incompatible groups.
For the dwarfs out in Belmar, it's bad news. The parade organiser Eugene "Chip" Cavanagh, has said that the dwarfs, or "little people" as they want to be called, got drunk at the parade last year and said he was justified in excluding them this year. "They're lucky they didn't get locked up," he said. The little people hit back by picketing the parade, which took place last Sunday. Dressed in green and carrying signs that read: "Belmar Oppresses Little People," they denied public drunkenness and say they face discrimination because of their size. The group's sponsor, party organiser and sex toy salesman Glen Kislowski, a big person, has said he will run for local office to highlight the cut down on good times in Belmar.
In Morristown, at the request of Bishop Arthur Serratelli some 20 priests have complained to parade organisers about the inclusion of the Now. The organisation has retaliated against the bishop by showing a 1997 documentary about the Vatican's discrimination against women on their local access TV show.
In Manhattan, meanwhile, the parade has yet to condemn comments made two years ago by then parade chairman Jim Barker that homosexuality is a disease that can be cured in a hospital and that, if gays were allowed to march, they might attack children lining the parade route. These comments were published verbatim in the Irish Voice, whose editor, Niall O'Dowd, has been excluded from the parade, along with the group he chairs, the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR). The new parade chairman, John Dunleavy, says ILIR is an advocacy group. He has also refused a last-minute compromise to allow members of the Co Louth Association to wear ILIR T-shirts.
OUT AT THE pro-gay Woodside parade last Sunday, participants said the days of trying to negotiate with the Manhattan parade are long over and that the only solution is their own parade, which includes Trotskyites, the American Green Party and the marching band, dressed in the green of St Patrick and the black of the anarchy movement. "We were given the opportunity to march in Manhattan but we turned it down," said the band's banjo player, Andy, who describes himself as more of a socialist than an anarchist. "The Manhattan parade discriminates, so we're not going to join. I guess it's discrimination against the discriminators. Someone has to take a stand."