With a new leadership installed, the Staten Island St. Patrick’s Day Parade will allow LGBTQ+ groups to participate under their own banner for the first time in 60 years. The event has become notorious for its steadfast refusal to end the longtime ban despite growing pressure to do so for decades. But Edward Patterson, the new head of Richmond County St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, has finally made it happen.
The Staten Island parade was long thought to be one of the only St. Patrick’s Day celebrations left in the world that still excluded LGBTQ+ people, justifying its policy based on the teachings of the Catholic Church. LGBTQ+ people were also banned for 20 years from the parade that takes place in Manhattan – the biggest St. Patrick’s Day Parade in the world – but that ban ended in 2014.
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“Quite simply, it’s just time,” Patterson told reporters on Tuesday. “People stepped up with a change in mindset that, frankly, wanted the controversy to go away.”
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Parade organizers have invited the Pride Center of Staten Island to march in the March 2, 2025 parade, which the organization’s executive director Carol Bullock said was an honor.
“This event is a time-honored tradition that brings people together from all walks of life to celebrate Irish culture,” Bullock said in a statement posted to Instagram, “and we are excited to be part of this vibrant community celebration.”
Bullock has long fought for the right to participate in the event. She has spent years applying for a slot, despite repeatedly getting rejected.
“Our parade is for Irish heritage and culture,” longtime parade committee president Larry Cummings reportedly told The Irish Voice in 2018. “It is not a political or sexual identification parade.”
In 2020, he maintained that position, griping at the Advance that “it’s a non-sexual identification parade and that’s that.”
In 2022, Bullock spoke about submitting her application in person to Cummings, who immediately placed it in the rejection pile when she handed it to him. He then did the same with applications from organizations supporting LGBTQ+ firefighters and officers.
Parade organizers have not only been hostile to the participation of LGBTQ+ groups, but they have even physically removed folks from the parade who they felt supported LGBTQ+ people. In the past, they have also banned individual people from participating.
In 2020, Miss Staten Island, Madison L’Insalata, couldn’t march because she came out as bisexual, and Republican City Councilman Joseph Borelli was barred by parade marshals because he had a rainbow pin on his jacket.
“They physically blocked me, my wife, and two boys in strollers,” Borelli said at the time, adding, “I didn’t come with it looking for an argument. My friends handed a pin to me. I really didn’t think it was a big affront to the Irish.”
As a result of these stringent policies, many New York officials have refused to attend the parade, and last year, LGBTQ+ activists decided to hold a separate, more inclusive event. The decision to end the ban on the original parade was likely spurred by the number of people and groups who participated in the inclusive event while boycotting the exclusive one.
Now, according to SI Live, the end of the LGBTQ+ ban has positioned the parade to be one of the largest in years.
“It is not lost on the parade committee how controversial this event has become,” the group said in a statement. “The end to this controversy is to the benefit of the committee, the Pride Center, and the greater Staten Island community.”
“This is an emotional thing for me, because it matters. Inclusion matters,” City Council member Kamillah Hanks, who has a half-Irish trans stepdaughter, told reporters. “Now this parade will truly represent all Staten Islanders.”
“Knowing how much the community supported us with the second parade, I know the feeling that everyone else is going to have out there now,” Bullock told the New York Times. “That’s the most gratifying thing.”
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