A shake up in the leadership of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade has opened up the annual event to gay groups for the first time in decades.
John Dunleavy, the longtime chairman of the group that organizes the high-energy March 17 celebration, was ousted during a board meeting Tuesday night, the Daily News has learned.
Dunleavy, 78, was adamantly against allowing gay groups to participate in the famous Fifth Ave. parade — leading to years of bitter boycotts by many city politicians and LGBT organizations.
The exclusion of gay groups had been a hot-button issue within the parade leadership for years — with Dunleavy and his hardline backers facing increasing pressure.
Dunleavy’s removal came at a watershed moment in LGBT history, just weeks after some 60 percent of the population in staunchly Catholic Ireland voted to legalize gay marriage, and on the heels of the landmark Supreme Court ruling Friday that legalized same-sex unions across the U.S.
Dunleavy will remain as the chair of the parade committee, which coordinates the groups that march in the event, according to a statement from organizers.
John Lahey, the former vice chair of the parade’s board, will take over as chairman, the organization said.
Lahey was given direct authorization to add a second lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender group to the 253-year-old event — and possibly open the door to other groups in future.
“(We are) committed to building on the tradition of celebrating the contributions of all men and women of Irish descent through the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City,” Lahey’s statement said.
“We honor the values, the sacrifice, the great heart, of those who have come before and look to inspire those who come after.”
The announcement was greeted with great jubilation by Brendan Fay, an Irish LGBT rights activist and documentary filmmaker, who organized the all-inclusive St. Pat’s For All parade in Queens in defiance of Dunleavy’s anti-gay stance.
“It would be a dream come true, if we could join the St. Patrick’s Day Parade up Fifth Avenue under our own banner, as proud LGBT Irish,” said Fay, who got emotional over the news.
“It’s a new day for LGBT people in Ireland, a new day for us in the U.S. and it will truly be a new day when we are on Fifth Avenue celebrating our Irish heritage,” he said.
Fay hasn’t participated in the parade since 1991, when he and a group of gays marched alongside Mayor David Dinkins as part of a one-time, negotiated agreement with organizers.
“We were pelted with beer cans, it was a terrible thing,” Fay remembered. “Our exclusion of this event has diminished the celebration for everyone.”
While gays have been permitted to partake in the parade as marchers, they had to stay invisible, said Fay.
That only changed this March, when advertisers, politicians and many of its sponsors, including local colleges, boycotted the march. Dunleavy, under tremendous pressure, allowed OutNBC, a group of LGBT workers from the network that broadcasts the parade, to march in it.
The grand marshal in 2015 was Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who made no official sanction of OutNBC’s inclusion, but did appear at the press conference announcing the parade was welcoming an LGBT group.
The OutNBC contingent, as a new addition to the parade, was required to join at the end of the parade — well out of camera range for the official broadcast.
But Lahey arranged for them to be interviewed before the kick-off, ensuring they would be part of the televised event — a step that enraged Dunleavy, The News has learned.
Dunleavy pulled the plug on having OutNBC march again and threatened to cancel the parade broadcast contract with NBC.
Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University, said he would leave his post if gay groups were once again banned — prompting the decisive showdown with Dunleavy at Tuesday’s board meeting that ended with the 22-year chairman’s ouster.