Being gay and Irish on Staten Island

Ilive on a tree-lined street on Staten Island’s North Shore, with my wife and our dog, and we fit in. We visit small businesses, spend our money locally, and try to support our neighbors however we can. Our friends live all around, and we feel rooted, planted and welcome here. It is a beautiful neighborhood and a beautiful borough; one I believe doesn’t get the proper credit for being a great place to live.

And every year, around this time, I remember why Staten Island gets a bad rap.

Every year, in early March, Staten Island kicks off the rash of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations that are held in every borough by hosting a parade down Forest Ave. This year’s parade is Sunday.

It is a great day — one that draws out young and old, a day when everyone is Irish. Including gay people. Every year for the past six years, I have attempted to sign my organization, the Pride Center of Staten Island, up for a chance to march under our own banner in the parade.

The Pride Center does amazing work on this borough: providing a safe space for those who identify as part of the LGBTQ community, particularly our young people. At the Pride Center, we offer acceptance, dignity and worth, and we encourage people to live their lives as honest and true to themselves as they can. The work we do has literally saved lives.

Yet every year, despite the mental preparation I do before applying, it still feels like a slap in the face when I am told not to bother.

The reason: organizers say the parade is “not a sexual orientation parade” and that the teachings of the Catholic Church do not support our existence or require we be allowed to march under our own banner.

Walking up to a Catholic Church rectory to apply, I never imagined I would be met with so much hostility and hatred. I never expected it in a Catholic Church and certainly not in the borough I call home. A group of community supporters of all belief and sexuality and race came with me as I attempted to sign up.

I cannot describe the disrespect I received by the parade organizer, Larry Cummings, as a couple of his parade committee members silently stood by. As I walked out of the church, the juxtaposition of that hatred to the showing of compassion and support from community members was jarring.

Let’s examine this: the seven tenets of Catholicism focus on life and dignity, family, community and participation, rights and responsibilities, helping the poor, the dignity of work and the rights of workers, solidarity, and care for God’s creations.

I don’t want to debate theology here, but don’t we fall into all these categories? Hiding behind religious tenets feels fake and disingenuous, especially since precedent exists elsewhere.

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan allowed LGBTQ groups to march in 2014, after a two-decade ban. Parades in Boston and Dublin have done the same. Last year, a parade in the Bronx for the first time allowed an LGBTQ group to march openly. Staten Island, in this regard, is out of touch, intolerant, and on a 20-year delay from the realities across the country.

The issue here has ruined much of what has made the parade so great for so long: the people. Politicians have bowed out of marching, foregoing their support because the parade is discriminatory and exclusionary.

Local businesses have placed signs in our support. The Community Board voted to withhold money, and so, too has the city scaled back its funding of the parade. We would argue the city shouldn’t fund the parade at all because it is exclusionary. Tax dollars should not pay for something that is blatantly discriminatory toward one group of people.

We don’t want another Pride Parade. All we want is a chance to march under a banner that reads, “Pride Center of Staten Island,” simply because we are proud of both being gay and of being Irish.

Instead, we’re left with a parade with few politicians marching, few businesses participating along the route, and few people happy that a great day has been tarnished.

The parade has become black eye for Staten Island.

I grew up in an Irish neighborhood, and I know what “stubborn Irish” looks like. This level of resistance has gone beyond that. This level of resistance is personal. So, I ask you, Larry Cummings, John Dick, Kathleen MacDonald, and Anne Clarke, as parade organizers, what are you so afraid of? What is lost by allowing us the right to celebrate our Irish heritage on a great day for our borough?

I know what’s already been lost by banning us from participating.