Keep the Rainbow Flags Out of St. Patrick’s Day Parades
My support of gays has been pretty long-standing, but that isn’t to say the group, or more accurately strident members of a group, doesn’t annoy me at times. I get frustrated when the vision of gays becomes so narrow and they see everything through rainbow colored glasses as being all about their sexuality. Honestly as a straight guy I don’t see the world through the prism of my sexuality. I don’t walk around imagining bedding every female I meet or allowing my hormones to color my thinking at all times. In fact I don’t think much about my sexuality at all, and while I give them more leeway to define themselves more through their sexuality due to our culture’s historical antagonism towards homosexuality, it’s becoming time for gays to integrate more than bloviate about themselves. Freud believed homosexuality was an expression of narcissism, so actions like boycotting St. Patrick’s Day parades because gays can’t make the celebration of Irish heritage about them simply feeds negative stereotypes about them.
As an American of Irish ancestry who has been to Ireland and studied its rich history and culture, there is much for everyone to celebrate on St. Patrick’s Day. Here you have a people who struggled for most of their history to survive and were nearly wiped-out by the British government’s genocidal policies during the 19th century. I’ve poured over ships manifests from the mid 19th century and seen the names of those refugees alongside their listed occupation as “laborer”, “servant” or “laundress.” Many never even made it, having died aboard the disease-infested coffin ships, their names crossed out in the manifest. Those who survived arrived on foreign shores destitute, despised and often forced into bondage while their culture at home was under attack, their language banned, their Catholic religion preventing them from holding high office or even decent jobs.
Yet they endured. Today a quarter of Americans can claim these poor Micks as their ancestors and their struggle to survive, thrive and eventually succeed can be celebrated by members of all ethnic groups, even gay members of those groups.
St. Patrick’s Day is more than wearing green and drinking crappy American beer died green, neither things an Irishman would ever do. It is a remembrance and celebration of a unique voice in the chorus of our society, one that offers hope to today’s destitute and despised arrivals on foreign shores. By comparison, the rainbow flags and GLAAD signs pale in significance and make gays appear petty and self-centered.
Gays need to leave the rainbow flags at home, don the green and hoist a pint to the Irish who made our country, and this world, a better place. There will be other times, other parades, for gays to celebrate their sexuality, but the St. Patrick’s Day parade is not one of them.
wendy:
Thank you. This is exactly how I feel. I got excoriated on another website when I tried to express this. They were not banned. What was banned was the signs and banners. Everyone who wanted to march to celebrate St. Patricks Day was welcome!! I have nothing against anybodies sexuality, but it didn’t need to be broadcast at a parade like this.
18 March 2014, 2:20 pmScott Kirwin:
I think we should attend a gay pride rally wearing green and carrying signs that celebrate Irish history and St. Patty’s Day.
18 March 2014, 5:47 pm