NYC buckles to pressure: For first time ever, gay and lesbian groups will openly march in St. Patricks Day parade

It is interesting that the left continues to defend Islam and Muslim extremists who murder innocents and create turmoil in entire regions of the world, yet at home attack Christians, and especially Catholics, every chance they get.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - New York City's St. Patrick's Day parade along Fifth Avenue will allow a gay and lesbian group to march for the first time, following protests from New York City's mayor Bill de Blasio, homosexual advocacy groups and advertisers like Heineken and Guinness.

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Gay and lesbian groups have accused the parade of being discriminatory because the parade's organizers have said that they do not want any group to have sexual identification while they march. Sexual identifiers should be irrelevant for any group that wants to march in a parade in honor of Irish culture and Saint Patrick; it should not be co-opted to become a parade about homosexuality.

The first openly-gay group that will march in the parade is Out@NBCUniversal, a group of homosexual members of NBC, which is also the company that has the rights to broadcast the parade.

Even this charitable gesture has not been enough for many gay and lesbian groups. Emmaia Gelman, a spokeswoman for Irish Queers, said that Heineken's decision to sponsor the parade was a deliberate attack on the homosexual community.

"It's always tough when corporate money undercuts a community's work, but it happens all the time," she said.

"Heineken has supported LGBT issues as a way to present themselves as fresh and modern, but homophobic 'bros' are also a market for them. It looks like they did a calculation, and they decided standing up to bigots wasn't worth the trouble."

New York city officials have also said they will not march in the parade, upset over the fact that groups that wished to openly flaunt their agenda didn't have a larger presence in the religious parade.

"I made very clear that there has to be more progress for me to consider marching in the parade," de Blasio said in a statement.

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