St Pat's Day Parade draws Mayoral candidates

South Boston's St. Patrick's Day Parade, the last vestige of overt anti-gay discrimination in the city, kicks off from Broadway Station on March 15. Among the marchers will be two mayoral hopefuls, City Councilors Michael Flaherty and Sam Yoon. Meanwhile, Mayor Thomas Menino, who has not yet made his electoral intentions known, will stand on the sidelines and a third challenger, developer Kevin McCrea, will sit out the event completely.

Organizer John "Wacko" Hurley has notoriously banned LGBT groups from participating in the event, winning a unanimous Supreme Court ruling protecting his right to do so in 1995.

Menino has boycotted the St. Patrick's Day parade since the court ruling. His spokeswoman, Dot Joyce, confirmed that he would do the same this year.

"He's a guy who really believes in inclusion for all, and until everyone believes the same way he does in that parade he's going to choose not to participate," said Joyce. "It's a great day, he does go over there to kick off the parade, he participates in the breakfast, but he does not believe in the policies of the parade planners."

Joyce added that while Menino would not march in Southie, "he will be marching in gay pride." Each summer Menino marches at the front of the Boston Pride parade, following close behind the Moving Violations Motorcycle Club.

McCrea said he is boycotting this year's parade after "deliberating about this for years." As a candidate for an at-large City Council seat in 2005, McCrea told the Leather District Neighborhood Association (LDNA) during a candidate forum that as an elected official he would march in the parade and invite his gay and lesbian friends and supporters to join his contingent. At the time, McCrea recalled this week in an interview with Bay Windows, he had hoped that as an Irish Bostonian who supported gay rights that he could help bridge the gap between parade organizers and the LGBT community. Though he did not win a seat on the Council, McCrea said in the years since he has decided he cannot participate in the parade until it changes its anti-gay policy. If elected mayor, the South End resident said he would maintain that stance.

"My position would be I'd love to sit down with the parade organizers and say, look, it's 2009. I'd love to march in the St. Patrick's parade and I'd love to march with my gay friends, and let's break down the walls and allow the gays to march," said McCrea. "If they continue to exclude gays I won't march in the parade. If they include gays then I would love to march in the parade."

Yoon, who won election to the City Council in 2005, also participated in the LDNA candidate forum and, according to McCrea, pledged not to participate in the parade because of the anti-gay policy. In an interview with Bay Windows this week, Yoon said he remembers being asked about the parade but does not recall his answer, and said he did march in that year's parade.

Flaherty said he strongly supports LGBT rights, but would continue to march in the parade, as he has done for nearly his entire life. He said his response to the anti-gay exclusion has been to invite LGBT supporters to march with his contingent.

"I intend to march. The parade doesn't define me or my consistent record and support of the GLBT community," said Flaherty. "I have participated in the St. Patrick's Day parade since I was one years old; that takes me back to 1970."

Flaherty said he has a strong pro-LGBT record, from his support for same-sex marriage -- which predates the Goodridge ruling - to his vote in favor of Boston's transgender non-discrimination ordinance in 2002. Flaherty is also a longtime supporter of the Beantown Softball League, an LGBT organization that honored him with an award at its winter social in January.

Flaherty said he would continue to march in the parade as mayor.

"As mayor I will do what I do every year, and that's invite my gay supporters, staff and friends to march with me," said Flaherty, a lifelong resident of South Boston.

Yoon will march this year, too, but noted that he has also strongly opposed the parade's anti-gay policy. In 2007 the Dorchester resident wrote a letter to the parade organizers outlining his objections to the policy, and that same year he found himself assigned a spot near the back of the parade, behind not only other elected officials but behind candidates for office. Yoon said Menino, who mingles with revelers along the sidelines of the parade route and attends other St. Patrick's Day festivities, makes no major sacrifice to his LGBT constituents by boycotting the parade itself.

"I think it costs him very little politically. It's very inexpensive to take that position, and how has he been hurt politically in South Boston by taking that position? I would suggest that he hasn't," said Yoon. "I have. I've had to walk past Wacko Hurley and his son pretty much at the very end of the parade and have them shake my hand with that letter in mind."

Yoon said if elected mayor he would continue to march in the parade but encourage his LGBT supporters to join his contingent and be visible.

"I will make this promise. When I'm elected mayor I will invite the GLBT community with rainbow flags to march behind me in my mayoral contingent, and we'll see what happens," said Yoon.

Flaherty's campaign also downplayed the significance of Menino's stance on the parade.

"The mayor may say that he boycotts the St. Patrick's Day parade. The fact of the matter is it's more of a ploy-cott," said Flaherty campaign spokesman Jonathan Romano. "He still gets interviewed on TV, he still attends house parties, and he walks on the sidewalk over the course of the parade. It's disingenuous to say the least."

It is clear many LGBT Bostonians see Menino's refusal to march in the parade as a powerful gesture of support for the community. Don Gorton, longtime South Ender and chair of the Anti-Violence Project, said he does not expect the decision about whether or not to march would be a litmus test for LGBT voters in the mayoral race, but believes it will factor into their decision. Gorton said he is not yet formally supporting any candidate.

"The issue has symbolic importance. We're being excluded from the St. Patrick's Day parade as openly gay and lesbian people. We can march if we're not open about it," said Gorton. "And that's a very offensive message. It tells us we're wanted only in closets. I think Mayor Menino set a high standard when he decided not to march. I would hate to see a retreat from that high standard. ... There is going to be discomfort with having the mayor or a mayoral candidate appearing in a parade that excludes gay people."

Gorton, who was active in the Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance during the initial controversy around the parade, said he does not believe Menino's presence in the crowd at the parade nor his attendance of the St. Patrick's Day Breakfast diminish his decision not to march.

"I think it's a courageous decision not to march. We can't march as who we are, so he's not marching. We can show up as who we are, we can show up on the sidelines, so there's no reason the mayor shouldn't be doing that," said Gorton.

Bill Svetz, president of the Boston Gay Rights Fund and general manager at Fritz sports bar, as well as a Flaherty supporter, said he believes enough time has passed that few LGBT Bostonians are concerned about who marches in the parade. Svetz, who is helping organize an LGBT fundraiser for Flaherty March 17 at Club Caf?, said South Boston has become much friendlier to the gay community since the mid-1990s, and few people see the parade's policy as a reflection of the sentiments of the community as a whole. In the early 1990s when the group that sued to march in the parade, the Irish American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston (GLIB), won a temporary court order allowing them to march, Svetz said Fritz organized a group of supporters to travel to Southie to attend the parade.

"At this time I don't think it matters to anyone who marches in the parade. At this point there's only one person who runs that parade, Wacko Hurley, and we know who he is," said Svetz.