Applause Greets Bloomberg at St. Pat’s For All

The annual Queens St. Patrick’s Parade, also known as the St. Pat’s for All Parade, has become something of a political minefield for Mayor Bloomberg.Yesterday the mayor was greeted with applause at the event, the only St. Patrick’s Day parade in the city that permits gay and lesbian groups to march with their banners, yet when he left, some participants painted his appeal of last month’s ruling on same-sex marriage as woefully hypocritical.The mayor of New Paltz, Jason West, who made national headlines for marrying 25 same-sex couples last year, said the mayor had “decided to side with those for whom bigotry and hatred and exclusion are more important.”“I think that Mayor Bloomberg is an embarrassment at this point,” Mr. West, 27, said as the parade wended its way through the middle-class neighborhood of Sunnyside. Last year the New Paltz politician said he hoped his New York City counterpart would join his cause.After nearly a year of public pressure, Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican, announced in early February that he supported giving legal recognition to same-sex marriage – a position that even some prominent Democrats have not taken. “People have the right to love, to live with, and to marry whoever they want,” the mayor said.In the next breath, however, Mr. Bloomberg declared that he would appeal a ruling by a state Supreme Court judge in Manhattan that would compel the New York City clerk to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. The mayor said it simply did not make sense to issue licenses without a verdict from the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. Without it, he said, the city would run the risk of having to nullify the certificates.Before taking a helicopter to Staten Island yesterday for a second St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Mr. Bloomberg told the crowd he shared their view on same-sex marriage and that they differed only on how to achieve that goal.The mayor’s stance on the issue has given his opponents in the upcoming mayoral election more ammunition, adding to a stockpile that includes Mr. Bloomberg’s insistence that the city should subsidize a domed stadium on Manhattan’s West Side and what other candidates characterize as his failed overhaul of the public-school system.Yesterday, nearly all of the mayoral candidates split their time between the Queens and Staten Island parades, shaking hands and showing their faces in two politically important swing areas of the city. The speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller; the borough president of Manhattan, C. Virginia Fields; the former borough president of the Bronx, Fernando Ferrer, and Rep. Anthony Weiner all made appearances in Queens – the last two at a bar called Saints & Sinners, just as the parade wrapped up.While the Staten Island parade route was packed with cheering crowds, the “inclusionary” Queens parade had only a few stragglers holding signs on the sidewalks and some vendors offering green balloons, necklaces, and hats. The event gets a regular procession of elected officials and political candidates who want to show their support for gay issues and serves as mechanism to protest the city’s largest St. Patrick’s Day parade on March 17 along Fifth Avenue, which bars gay groups.At Staten Island, Mr. Bloomberg said this was the first of three weekends of St. Patrick’s Day events and proclaimed: “Everyone has a little Irish today.” He also said people were “screaming” along the parade route in support of the stadium.During the earlier parade, the local Democratic district leader, Daniel Dromm, said he was glad the mayor came – Mayor Giuliani never attended – but said he wanted a regime change in City Hall.“I don’t see how somebody who believes in gay marriage can then turn around and, you know, appeal the decision that was made,” he said.The founder of the parade, Brendan Fay, said the mayor had gone out of his way to be at the parade every year and to invite the leadership to Gracie Mansion. Mr. Fay said, though, that he was still disappointed with the mayor’s stance. The mayor of Nyack, John Shields, who was wearing a Kelly-green scarf and a black top-hat adorned with a gay-pride rainbow, called Mr. Bloomberg “cowardly.”“I think Mayor Bloomberg is trying to ride both sides of the fence, and I think he’s a cowardly elected official,” said Mr. Shields, who is openly gay. He is appealing a court ruling that said he could not administer gay marriages.The issue has been a tricky one for Mr. Bloomberg. The ruling by Justice Doris Ling-Cohen put him in the position of having to choose between courting Democrats, the overwhelming majority of city voters, or appeasing Republicans, whom he needs to win the primary and to rally behind him in the general election. It is, though, also shaping up to be a thorny issue for some of his Democratic challengers, who will need support from conservative Democrats who don’t support gay marriage.Yesterday, Council Member Christine Quinn of Manhattan, who brought a plate of waffles to a news conference last year to chide the mayor for “waffling” on gay marriage, said, “It’s certainly nice that the mayor came” but parade appearances “fall into the talk-is-cheap category.”The Queens parade’s lone bagpipe player, John Maynard, said he is gay but he agreed with the mayor’s appeal. Riding the No. 7 train back to Manhattan after the parade, Mr. Maynard said: “I go along with it. It’s probably a good way to do it. If you get the courts, you can settle it once and for all.”

Applause Greets Bloomberg at St. Pat’s For All

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