In boycotting the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Mayor de Blasio will exercise his First Amendment right to express his belief that the march’s organizers should permit gay and lesbian groups to take part under banners that express their sexual orientation.
De Blasio is entitled to articulate his views and will be held accountable for them by voters concerned with the issue. He was right to reject calls by elected officials and activists to bar police and firefighters from participating in their uniforms.
An open letter to de Blasio, whose signatories include Public Advocate Letitia James and seven other elected officials — Council Members Corey Johnson, Mark Levine, Rosie Mendez and Helen Rosenthal, Assemblymen Richard Gottfried and Keith Wright and state Sen. Brad Hoylman — is truly frightening. Those officials show both absolute ignorance of the First Amendment and an arrogant willingness to stifle free expression by others with whom they disagree.
The parade is run by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a Roman Catholic Irish group that claims a mission “to uphold, defend and protect the Roman Catholic Church, its priests and bishops, its teachings and tenets.” They celebrate Irish and Roman Catholic heritage every March 17.
The group bars parade banners or signs except the American and Irish flags and the names of its affiliated groups. It also strives to exclude political messages, including right-to-life advocacy.
Alleging that the parade has an “explicitly anti-gay” agenda, James and her fellow officials claim that having uniformed officials participate amounts to “a clear violation of the City’s Human Rights Law.”
Absurdly over the top, they also claim that letting cops and firefighters parade as cops and firefighters “sends a clear signal to LGBTQ New Yorkers that these personnel, who are charged with serving and protecting all New Yorkers, do not respect the lives or safety of LGBT people.”
Not satisfied with that slur on members of the two departments, James and the others go on: “It confirms the practice of the NYPD and FDNY at times of targeting certain communities for discrimination. What’s more, it betrays the current work of high level government agencies and human rights advocates working internationally against the current wave of extreme anti-LGBTQ legislation and discriminatory practices occurring in countries such as Nigeria, Uganda and Russia.”
As for the Human Rights Law, in 1993 Federal Judge Kevin Duffy correctly ruled that the Human Rights Commission had grossly trampled the First Amendment in trying to order parade organizers to include a gay group.
Government officials, among them many of New York’s most liberal thinkers, have no place trying to regulate what marchers can or cannot do in their exercise of free speech — even if the officials abhor what’s being said.
Where the First Amendment is in play, who are they to judge?
