First LGBTQ Group To March In Brooklyn St. Patrick's Day Parade

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — For the first time, a rainbow flag will join the crowds of green this year in Brooklyn's St. Patrick's Day Parade.

The parade, in its 44th year, has admitted The Brooklyn Irish LGBTQ Organization to join dozens of groups marching through Park Slope and Windsor Terrace on the Irish holiday, making them the first Irish LGBTQ group to join the annual celebration, BILO announced this week.

The announcement — which came with the help of Assemblymember Robert Carroll, whose grandfather founded the parade — represents a moment of inclusivity for members of the LGBTQ community in Brooklyn who are also of Irish descent, BILO founders said.

“The Irish- and Irish-American community in Brooklyn is diverse and for the first time this parade will fully reflect this diversity,” co-founder Lisa Fane said. “We look forward to marching behind our banner with our family and friends in a unified parade - joining so many other neighborhood community groups in a joyous and fun celebration of Irish culture.”

Fane and BILO's other co-founder, Matthew McMorrow, started discussing the idea of having an Irish LGBTQ contingent in the parade a few years back with Carroll, the assembly member said. Back then, BILO was not an officially formed group, but its members started talking with parade organizers about the idea.

This year, BILO became an official organization and submitted its application. The founders and Carroll sent letters to the parade committee and eventually sat down with organizers last week.

"Finally, all of us kind of decided that it made sense to put in a formal application," Carroll said. "This is a parade that is near and dear to my heart. My grandfather always saw it as a place for the expression of contributions of Irish-Americans to New York and to America, and to celebrate the broad diverse experience of that is just absolutely fantastic."

The parade began in 1976 and is one of two St. Patrick's Day processions in Brooklyn, the second of which will be held in Bay Ridge the week after the holiday. Each year dozens of organizations join the Park Slope and Windsor Terrace route with as many as tens of thousands of onlookers, Carroll estimated.

The parade has had at least one clash with the LGBTQ community since its founding, Carroll said, when a protest was held in 1999 about the lack of LGBTQ marchers. McMorrow recalled this lack of marchers when reflecting on the significance of BILO's acceptance to the parade.

“For many years, I have watched this parade march past my apartment,” BILO co-founder Matthew McMorrow said. “On display was a proud celebration of identities within the Irish and Irish-American community, including dancers and Girl Scouts, musicians and police officers. Always missing was a celebration of LGBTQ identities within the Irish community."

He added that the celebration of Brooklyn's Irish LGBTQ community members seems especially appropriate given that Ireland recently passed marriage equality and elected a gay Taoiseach.

This year, the Brooklyn parade is also the only St. Patrick's procession in the city held on the actual holiday, March 17, since the Manhattan celebration doesn't hold its parade on Sundays.

It will kick off at 1 p.m. and runs from Prospect Park West and 15th Street down to 7th Avenue and Garfield Place then back over to Prospect Park West. The Parade Grand Marshal this year is Bernadette Buckley Kash, who runs the Buckley School of Irish Dance.

BILO said that details about how members of the community can join them in the parade are forthcoming.

“This is an amazing sign that communities across the United States are increasingly embracing the LGBTQ family among them," BILO board member Jared B. Arader said. "I’m excited to march, for the first time in Brooklyn, as a member of both communities.”