Staten Island St. Patrick’s Day holds a near sacred place on our borough’s spiritual, social, and cultural calendar.
For decades on the first Sunday in March, we have joined thousands of Staten Islanders in flocking to Forest Avenue donned in Aran sweaters and shamrocks to celebrate our Irish heritage, pride, and the innumerable contributions Irish Americans have made to our country and community.
I personally love this day as well as the gala dinner and festival Sunday that have raised money for the parade. This tradition has also for 25 years included our pre-parade Hon. Jerome X.O’Donovan breakfast at Jody’s Club Forest, where elected officials and community leaders gather to kick off the festivities for the day and in many ways launch the year’s political season.
Unfortunately, this uniquely Staten Island celebration has been sullied in recent years by the exclusion of our borough’s Pride Center, GOAL New York, and other LGBTQ groups from openly marching alongside their neighbors. Their exclusion is based on an ignorant misunderstanding about what this day, the Catholic church, and these groups stand for, and we remain steadfast in our call for the Parade Committee to finally make the right decision and end their discriminatory prohibition on them from marching.
But until then, we cannot in good conscience continue to host our pre-parade breakfast as we have done for so many years. Standing with those left on the sidelines because of their sexual orientation must mean more than simply not marching down Forest Avenue, and so this year Jody’s will not be home to our beloved non-partisan gathering of political and community leaders from across the Island and indeed, New York State.
I dare say that the true Irish Spirit of St. Patrick is to ensure that no child of God, whether they identify as Irish, LGBTQ, or any other way, is oppressed, excluded, or otherwise treated unfairly because of who they are.
Our Irish forebears fled tyranny and oppression and…
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