For first time, Boston will admit gay group to St. Patrick’s Day parade

First New York. Now, Boston.

From the AP: 

For the first time in its history, the sponsors of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade will allow a group representing the gay community to participate, drawing cheers from Mayor Martin Walsh, who boycotted the event last year over the exclusion.

The South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, which has long resisted the inclusion of gay groups and won a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1995 upholding their right to ban them from the annual parade that draws hundreds of thousands of spectators, voted 5-4 on Monday night to allow the group OutVets to march in the parade scheduled for March 15.

They will be allowed to carry a blue banner with five white stars representing the branches of the military and six vertical rainbow stripes. The group represents lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender veterans and participated in the city’s Veterans Day parade last month.

OutVets is being allowed to participate because of their members’ military service, and sexual orientation was irrelevant in the vote, said Brian Mahoney, commander of the veterans council. The parade is meant to honor veterans and Irish-American heritage, and OutVets met the criteria, he said.

“It was a group of vets who wanted to march and we said ‘Yeah,’ ” he said Tuesday.

The Boston Herald notes:

Mahoney said the group will be allowed to carry a blue banner upon which is a “pallet of color” that “some might see as a rainbow.”

“This conforms to the tenets of the parade,” Mahoney said. “The parade is devoted to honoring the service of veterans. It’s is our aim to honor that service and the history of the Irish Catholics in Boston. Anything that detracts from that is verboten.”