VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press
NEW YORK - The chairman of the nation's biggest St. Patrick's Day Parade sidestepped questions Friday about his incendiary remarks about gays, as bagpipers and bands marched past hundreds of thousands of flag-waving spectators.
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Organizers have faced questions about their attitudes toward gays and have barred an Irish gay and lesbian group for 16 straight years.
The snub led City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is openly gay and of Irish descent, to decline to participate in the Fifth Avenue march, and she blasted Dunleavy over remarks that appeared in The Irish Times on Thursday.
He told the newspaper, "If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow Neo-Nazis into their parade? If African Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?"
About the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, Dunleavy said, "People have rights. If we let the ILGO in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?"
GOI: Well, he could have just come out and said the basic, "we hate fags" but instead he went for the gold and compared them to Neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and prostitutes. What's next? I suppose next year we will hear some or all of the following: Gays are terrorists, gays are child molestors or gays have cloven feet. You know, there was a time when the Irish were heavily discriminated against. Isn't it interesting how quickly people forget their history of being discriminated against only to become the ones who perpetrate the descrimination?
However, he didn't win the gold for "worst bigot of St. Patricks Day 2006." Noooo, that honor goes to the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the supreme religious authority for Shi'ite Msulims in Iraq and worldwide.
In the midst of sectarian violence that threatens to drag Iraq into civil war, the country's influential Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has issued a violent death order against gays and lesbians on his Web site, according to London-based LGBT human rights groups OutRage.
Written in Arabic, the fatwa comes from a press conference with the powerful religious cleric, where he was asked about the judgment on sodomy and lesbianism. “Forbidden,” Sistani answered, according to OutRage, “Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”
GOI: Yey!!! Who's up for some good old fashioned torture and stoning???
My stomach is seriously sick right now.
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4 comments:
Just a question: Is the ILGO wanting to be a part of the parade wholly in celebration of Irishness? or is it to make a political statement?
The Supreme Court decided that a parade organization can narrow the participation of its event to showcase its intent. It was from the idea that Israeli groups would not have to include neoNazis or African Americans the KKK that the Court reached this conclusion.
Dunveavy is making a valid point with gross indelicacy.
I do have to wonder, James, if your choice to include "flag waving" is an attack on conservatives. Is it?
And do you harbour hatred for prostitutes, from what you see in Dunleavy's words? Do you?
Dunleavy was polically insensitive and probably let us see some rot in his heart, but if The Left wasn't given over to a Culture of Victimization and was looking for a better future instead of solely rejoicing in finding ways to whine, maybe Americans would want them to have some political power.
The ILGO got their political point made; they have nothing to complain about this year. Of course, an opportunity was lost to broaden understanding.
Tom:
I did not know about the Supreme Court ruling so thank-you for setting me straight there. I guess the answer might be for the ILGO to have their own parade seperate from the other one.
As for the "flag waving" attack, I'm not sure what you mean. Maybe you can clarify?
I hold no hatred for prostitutes and I apologize if my wording made it seem that way.
I agree that sometimes The Left can be too sensitive but I think most of the time it is justified. Equality and justice is something that is still lacking greatly in our "modern" society.
And in the end my reason for saying what I've said in this post was to try and broaden understanding.
James,
I am very sorry. I am on a bit of a personal jihad these days. I have been reading about the roots of the Left: how it used to represent the future, while the Right was trying to hold on to the prejudices and hatred of the past.
Nowadays, it is the Left which seems to be stuck in complaints of the past and has no vision of the future. Certainly, the Democrats, while gamely criticising Bush and the disaster of his policies, have offered nothing coherant and solidified about what to do about any of the difficult topics of the day.
In the past, now forgotten, was the kernal of an idea by Liberal thinkers that the future wasn't a specific goal, but an opportunity for us to find ways to ever improve on getting along better. Instead of ongoing bitter fighting, we solve and fix and unravel knotty problems.
In this way, the Liberals had a platform for governing and leading.
So, the problem in congress and in America, for that matter, isn't wholly the psychopathic Republicans -- it's that Liberalism has lost its way.
I have come around to the idea that Democrats are, indeed, now, Republican Lite. Instead, the Democrats need to be the realists and the fixers, extraordinaire, with nothing but means and methods to fix problems.
Tom:
I agree that many Dem's have forgotten their liberal heritage and have become Republican lite as you say. They need to grow a spine like Jack Murtha and get on top of it right here and now.
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