West, 26, attended the parade with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who says he “goes back and forth” on the issue of whether gay people should be allowed to marry, and has yet to take a public position on the issue.
With Bloomberg and West were city council speaker Gifford Miller, public advocate Betsy Gothbaum, City Comptroller William Thompson and many council members, including Christine Quinn, David Weprin, Helen Seares and Sunnyside’s Eric Gioa.
Gay activist Brendan Fay, who first organized the parade in response to the refusal of the March 17 Fifth Avenue parade organizers’ refusal to allow Irish gays to march under their own banner, uses the alternative St Patrick’s parade to highlight civil-rights issues and this year’s concern was the issue of extending marriage rights to gay couples.
“What we are seeing in America today is the largest flowering of a civil rights movement this country has seen in a generation,” said West, the Green Party mayor of New Paltz. “And I’m honored and surprised that I was put into a position to be able to articulate some of that movement.”
Mayor West has been criminally charged for performing 19 same sex marriages — both the city and the state of New York maintain that state law prohibits gay marriages.
Fay welcomed the crowd with a reminder of the line from the Irish proclamation of 1916 that declared, “cherishing all the children of the nation equally.”
“It’s been five years of struggle and five years of growing here in Queens,” he said. But his parade co-chair and friend Barbara Ann Heffernan Mohr reminded him that “we are here to celebrate Ireland, to celebrate St. Patrick and to celebrate the community spirit of right here in Queens.”
Another special guest, Malachy McAllister, told the audience that the “struggle for peace and justice in the north of Ireland goes on,” and read aloud a letter of support from Irish civil-rights leader Bernadette Devlin McAliskey. Referring to the Fifth Avenue parade, McAliskey wrote, “You are here [in Queens] with a better group of people.”
Visiting Queens to be in the parade were two Northern Ireland visitors, SDLP councilwoman Patricia Lewsley and Women’s Coalition representative Bronagh Hynes.
With the issue of gay marriage looming large across the nation this election year after President George W. Bush backed a proposed amendment to the constitution banning gays from attaining full marriage rights, some mayors such as New Paltz’s West and San Francisco’s Gavin Newsom to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.
Honored at the parade was lawyer Frank Durkan of law firm O’Dwyer and Bernstien, and local community leader Siobhan Kyne.
Despite fair weather, several regulars commented that turnout seemed lower than in previous years.