NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor
Bill De Blasio was to become the first mayor in decades Monday to miss
the city's traditional St. Patrick's Day parade over a dispute involving
whether march participants can carry pro-gay signs. But Ireland's Prime
Minister said he'll join the procession because the holiday is about
Irishness, not sexuality.
De Blasio's decision to skip the parade underscores
lingering political tensions over gay rights issues. Boston's Mayor
Martin Walsh stayed out of his city's parade on Sunday after talks broke
down that would have allowed a gay group to march.
Still, thousands of green-clad spectators came out
to watch bagpipers and marchers in Boston. A similar scene played out in
downtown Philadelphia. Cities including Montreal also hosted
festivities over the weekend, and throughout the world landmarks were
bathed in green floodlights.
Ireland's head of government, Enda Kenny, became
the first Irish prime minister to attend Boston's annual St. Patrick's
Day breakfast Sunday. Kenny has resisted pressure, in both Ireland and
America, to support the gay rights lobby's demand to have equal rights
to participate in parades on St. Patrick's Day.
"The St. Patrick's Day parade (in New York) is a
parade about our Irishness and not about sexuality, and I would be happy
to participate in it," he said in Dublin before leaving for a six-day
trip to the U.S.
In Ireland, St. Patrick's Day provides the launch
of the country's annual push for tourism, a big part of the rural
economy. "To Irish people by birth or descent, wherever they may be in
the world, and to those who simply consider themselves to be friends of
Ireland, I wish each and every one of you a happy, peaceful and
authentically Irish St. Patrick's Day," Irish President Michael D.
Higgins, the ceremonial head of state and guest of honor at Monday's
parade in Dublin, said in a statement.
New York's parade, a tradition that predates the
city itself, draws more than 1 million spectators and about 200,000
participants every March 17. Parade organizers in New York have said gay
groups are not prohibited from marching, but are not allowed to carry
gay-friendly signs or identify themselves as LGBT.
Some LGBT groups were to protest the parade along
the parade route on Fifth Avenue on Monday. Others had planned to dump
Guinness beer from the shelves of the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of
the gay rights movement, in protest of the brewer's plan to sponsor the
parade, but that demonstration was canceled late Sunday after Guinness
said in a statement that it had dropped its sponsorship.
Other beer companies joined the boycotts earlier,
with Sam Adams withdrawing its sponsorship of Boston's parade and
Heineken following suit in New York.