New York City Council Speaker Again Boycotts NYC St Pats Parade Over Gay Ban

New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn

The New York St. Patrick’s Day parade, the largest in the nation, drawing nearly 2 million spectators and 150,000 marchers, has for years prohibited any participation of LGBT groups and New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, an openly gay Irish American, has refused to march in the Big Apple’s St. Patrick’s Day parade again this year because of this.

Quinn has said she been asking the parade’s organizers, the New York City St. Patrick’s Parade and Celebration Committee since 2006 to sit down and have a meeting to discuss possible compromises, but that she has yet to get a response from them

The organizers of the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, on New York’s Fifth Avenue, instead made it clear that she could march as an individual and as a city official but she could not display anything suggesting gay pride or her sexual orientation.

So Quinn boycotted has the event since, choosing instead to spend this year here in Washington DC. She will be attending a reception for Irish-Americans at the White House tonight night hosted by President Obama, and that will feature Prime Minister Brian Cowen of Ireland.

Last year Quinn marched in the LGBT section of Dublin, Ireland’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

The New York City Council Speaker is considered the second most powerful position in city government after the Mayor. Quinn is the first woman and first openly gay person to be elected to this position. Quinn, 42, was elected to the New York City Council in 1999, and represents a Manhattan district that includes the heavily LGBT Chelsea and Greenwich Village areas of the city.

She was said to be a potential choice for the U.S. Senate after Hillary Clinton resigned her seat to become U.S. Secretary of State and is rumored to be considering a challenge to Kirsten Gillibrand who was appointed to that seat by New York Gov David Paterson in January in the 2010 elections.

Quinn has established herself as a frequent ally of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on a number of issues, though recent that relationship has become a bit rocky. Quinn took heavy flack for Bloomberg during a battle over extending term limits initiated by Bloomberg so that he could run for a third term and some Big Apple political insiders speculate that Quinn may be looking for the NYC Mayors job in 2013 when Bloomberg finally term limits out of office.

It would be interesting to see what would happen with the annual parade should that take place.