The Irish Catholics of South Boston have won another round in court against the liberals who want to take over their St. Patrick’s Day parade.
The parade has long been full of Irish, patriotic, and Catholic displays — our parish was even represented one year by a float depicting an altar and promoting our indult Mass — so the broad-minded liberals of Boston couldn’t let that kind of institution go on. Oh, how atavistic!
For a while, they tried to force the parade organizers — a private group, mind you — to let a gay group join the parade, on the ground that the parade was a “public accommodation” and subject to anti-discrimination laws. That dispute led to lengthy court battles, the cancellation of the parade in 1994, and finally vindication.
Let’s remember, folks, to get the rhetoric right here: since we approve of the court’s judgment in Hurley vs. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, it’s to be described as a “landmark decision”; otherwise, it would have been just the opinion of some right-wing kook judge. In this case, it was a unanimous decision of the US Supreme Court: the selection of groups to participate in a parade is a form of expression, and thus a matter of free speech.
Even that, however, wasn’t enough to dissuade the leftists from their efforts, and the city last year let an anti-war group piggyback on the parade by marching at its end. So — ya gotta love the names in this case — parade organizer John J. “Wacko” Hurley and attorney Chester Darling are keeping up the fight.