The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project will host a discussion via Zoom tomorrow, October 29th at 6:30pm ET on “High Level Madness”: For LGBTQ Inclusion in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. We will be hosting a fight for
The Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade is the most important expression of Irish culture and celebration in New York City.
But for 25 years since 1991, the fight for LGBTQ inclusion has been met with, in the words of Father Mikal Judge, “a high degree of insanity.”
On Tuesday night, Irish gay activist and filmmaker Brendan Fay spoke about the importance of Ireland’s LGBTQ visibility in a decades-long campaign and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations across the city. Appearing in an intergenerational conversation with American historian Emma Quinn.
Amanda Davis of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project will moderate the event, and there will be time for questions and answers from the audience.
“‘High Level Madness’: The Fight for LGBTQ Inclusion at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade” is free to attend via Zoom, but pre-registration is required. You can RSVP online here.
Brendan Fay is an Irish immigrant and longtime resident of Astoria, Queens, where he lives with his spouse, Tom Moulton. He is a human rights activist and filmmaker whose employment as a Catholic high school teacher in Queens was terminated in 1991 for marching with the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Fifth Avenue. Ta.
The Irish LGBTQ group he founded, the Lavender and Green Alliance – Muintir Aerach na Heirian, has been fighting with other groups for the right to march openly in parades for 25 years, a fight that began in 2016. It was successfully completed in 2016. and Queens’ St. Pat’s for All Parade, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2025.
“The story of Irish LGBT groups Lavender and Green Alliance and St Pat’s for All is a story of rising up, overcoming exclusion and creating spaces of cultural inclusion,” Fay told Tuesday’s debate. I mentioned it earlier.
“We were LGBT immigrants from Ireland. The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York is Ireland’s biggest cultural event. We said, ‘We belong to ourselves.'”
“After 25 years of struggle, on March 17, 2016, with tears and cheers, we raised the Lavender and Green Alliance “Muintir Aerach na hÉireann” flag from 48th Street to 5th Avenue. I have crossed the threshold. Hearts and history have changed. ”
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Brendan Fay.
Emma Quinn is an assistant professor and learning and curriculum services librarian at St. John’s University. She holds an MA in Irish and Irish American Studies from New York University and an MLIS from Long Island University. Her research interests include the history of gender and sexuality in the Irish Catholic diaspora, with a focus on New York, and inclusive and accessible pedagogy.
“As a queer child of Irish immigrants, I was drawn to this history as a way to understand my own history,” Quinn said.
“The fight to include LGBTQ+ people in St. Patrick’s Day parades is a fight over what it means to be Irish or Irish-American, and it’s a fight for the activists who worked so hard to gain acceptance. The impact is still felt.”
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Emma Quinn.
The free virtual program “‘High Level of Madness’: The Fight for LGBTQ Inclusion in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade” is part of the New York City LGBT Historic Sites Project’s “Historians and Activists: Cross-Cultural LGBTQ New York” . ” series is made possible by a grant from the New York Department of Humanities, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This is the first of a three-part series. Subsequent programs will address contemporary cross-cultural LGBTQ identities in the Puerto Rican and Jewish communities and their connections to historic sites in New York City from the 1950s to 2000.
