A New, Gay-Friendly St. Patrick’s Day Parade Is Coming to Staten Island
This year, for the first time, Staten Island will host a St. Patrick’s Day parade that allows L.G.B.T.Q. delegations to participate, a move that brings to a close a yearslong dispute between gay groups and parade organizers across the city over who can join in public celebrations of the patron saint of both Ireland and Catholic New York.
The original Staten Island parade has been the last holdout in a culture-war conflict that, for many New Yorkers, has felt settled for a decade.
The ban on L.G.B.T.Q. groups in the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan was lifted in 2014. But organizers of the parade on Staten Island have insisted that gay groups do not belong at an event for a Catholic saint.
That led to years of bitter debates and boycotts. To resolve that discord, Mayor Eric Adams’s office on Thursday announced that the city’s least populous and most conservative borough would now be home to two St.
