‘Diversity float’ will be part of St. Patrick’s Day Parade

[sheshe2]

Steve Martin and Randy Foster got some help building a float for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade from the Keenan family in South Boston.

snip

Last weekend as work had just begun on the flatbed, Brian R. Mahoney, the parade’s chief marshal, bounded into the chilly warehouse. Mahoney wore a shamrock tie and flipped aviator-style sunglasses up on his forehead. He greeted Foster with a hug.

“On behalf of the Allied War Veterans, I’d like to present you with your acceptance,” Mahoney said, handing Foster a thick, white envelope. “It’s going to be a great day. It’s a great thing you’re doing.”

Foster and his friends and neighbors are not marching Sunday as part of a gay organization. They are marching as South Boston residents who have coalesced around building a park in a corner of the neighborhood known as the Lower End. Many of the people working on the float just happen to be gay. And they have been embraced by the Allied War Veterans Council, the parade’s longtime sponsor.

“They know us as their neighbors first and as gay second,” said Foster, an Air Force veteran who served in Desert Storm and who has lived with his husband in South Boston for seven years. Of outside gay groups coming in and hoping to march, he said: “How in the world do you ever get compromise if the first statement out of your mouth is, ‘I'm different than you?’?”

Fact: South Boston has a substantial and growing gay population. Fact: A second neighborhood contingent with gay marchers will also be in the parade. Fact: Bill Linehan, City Council president, attacked as unfriendly to gay causes recently by some liberal activists, has been a catalyst behind the scenes to get the neighborhood groups accepted in the parade.

More: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/03/15/the-south-boston-patrick-day-parade-story-you-haven-heard/1cWGE9P41gWgvCTRodcbRI/story.html

[Bluenorthwest]

1. They can do as they wish, I read the website of the Allied War Veterans and it is a horrible

and off putting. These hypocrites cite their 'faith' as reason for their misanthropy and yet their website also promotes and directs you to bars for drinking yourself stupid, which does explain the stupid, but what happened to the 'faith' and community? Pushing drugs and excluding gays, that's Southie and you can keep it. The entire town sounds segregated and vicious.
Boston Strong? No, Boston's Wrong.

[sheshe2]

2. If you wish to condemn a whole city for what some

narrow minded people think, then that is your prerogative.

Yes, this is wrong of Boston. However to broadbrush our city and state is wrong too. Our new mayor tried to correct this. Sadly that did not happen.

Also

Same-sex marriage in Massachusetts began on May 17, 2004, as a result of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that it was unconstitutional under the Massachusetts constitution to allow only opposite-sex couples to marry. Massachusetts became the sixth jurisdiction in the world (after the Netherlands, Belgium, Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec) to legalize same-sex marriage. It was the first U.S. state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Massachusetts

And no, the entire city is not segregated and vicious.

[FailureToCommunicate]

3. Instead of dismissing all Boston on basis of one wrongheaded website, please come visit, and,

till then here is the report of yesterdays St Patricks Day Breakfast...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/03/16/politicians-gather-south-boston-for-annual-patrick-day-breakfast/V2MOoaQK44omTqzxyXSNyN/story.html