News :: GLBT
Remember: we can’t march in Southie’s Parade by Jeff Ross
Guest OpinionSaturday Mar 13, 2010 Since 1995 when the US Supreme Court made an ill-fated and improvident decision to preclude the LGBT community from marching in the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade of South Boston, the clock has been turned back on equality for the LGBT community. Back then, the Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston was denied the right to march in the parade, and thereby the clock was turned back on legislative progress made to insure full equality in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation under Massachusetts law enacted in the late 1980s. Equal isn’t equal if it’s only sometimes.
Under Massachusetts’ public accommodations statute, G.L. c. 151B, a person may not be denied full equality in public accommodations on the basis of his or her sexual orientation. The same state statute that protects other historically disenfranchised segments of the population, including people with disabilities, also affords protections to the LGBT community. The same public accommodations rationale that was adopted to support the civil rights of other groups has not been fully applied when it comes to discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy spearheaded the passage of the federal law: the American’s with Disabilities Act of 1990. Kennedy’s role in penning this civil rights legislation left an unmatched legacy for the nation. Arguably, this statute was modeled after earlier Massachusetts public accommodations law. Senator Kennedy’s charge to future generations crossed a new threshold of equality with the passage and codification of the landmark statute. Following passage of the legislation, signed by Republican president George H. W. Bush, elected officials from all spectrums of the political landscape heralded their support for the proposition that while traditional notions of free speech may protect private discriminatory sentiment, when it comes to public accommodations, free speech doctrine is no shield to protect those who would engage in invidious discrimination and exclude certain segments of the population from full access to public accommodations.
However, the same arguments accepted by bipartisan groups to support the rights of some groups, like the disabled, have inexplicably been rejected by courts when applied to members of the LGBT community. If organizers of the Saint Patrick’s Day parade are required by law to accommodate some members of the public on public accommodation grounds, then members of the LGBT community must also have the right to the same public accommodations that the law and courts have afforded others.
For many in the LGBT community, the answer is clear. Court precedents widely accepted in other contexts have been rejected in favor of arguments used to justify invidious discrimination against members of the LGBT community at the expense of reason, common sense, and justice. Our courts do not cite the First Amendment’s free speech protections to justify discrimination in other contexts; however, the right to free speech is routinely invoked to validate discrimination against those in the LGBT community.
An esteemed and pioneering journalist and historian, Chuck Colbert, penned in 2008 a first hand account of the details of mistreatment suffered by LGBT marchers in the 1992 Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade. According to Colbert, quoting from a "Boston Herald" article, "’Bottle and rock-throwing attacks’ greeted a gay Irish-American group marching in Boston’s 1992 St. Patrick’s Day parade." A year later, according to Colbert, when parade organizers sought to exclude the gay, lesbian and bisexual community, a legal advocacy group, the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) "went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in an ultimately losing battle." The case was Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston.
Denying gay members of the Irish community the opportunity to demonstrate their pride in their heritage along with their straight counterparts is not free speech. The Massachusetts legislature made great strides in the area of marriage equality when it rejected the notion of codifying discrimination into the state charter and when it repealed the 1913 marriage law that then-Governor Mitt Romney invoked to deny out-of-state same-sex couples the right to marry. In 2008, the Massachusetts legislature reaffirmed the principle that separate-but-equal isn’t equal.
Together, we have come a long way from the days of signs in storefronts saying "No Irish Need Apply!" Beginning on this Saint Patrick’s Day, the Baystate Stonewall Democrats will annually organize to protest discrimination. Along with State Representative Carl Sciortino; Boston City Councilor, Felix Arroyo; Claire Naughton, the first straight co-chair of any Stonewall Democrats’ chapter organization in the nation; other elected officials and candidates, and members of both the LGBT and straight communities, we will join to celebrate Irish heritage and our quest for full equality and to reject exclusion.
Although barred from commemorating St. Patrick’s Day by marching in the South Boston parade, and in hopes of changing the hearts and minds of the parade organizers, the LGBT community and friends and family will come together on Sunday, March 14, 2010 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the restaurant 28 Degrees, located at 1 Appleton St. in Boston’s South End. Please join us there in celebration of our community.
Jeff Ross is a practicing Boston attorney and former research associate of A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
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