Catholics generally receive a dispensation from the Lenten abstinence obligation whenever St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Friday. The festive feast day celebrating the patron saint of Ireland has been a religious holiday as big as Christmas on the Emerald Isle. Why, then, has it become a political football pitting the gay community against the Fifth Avenue parade organizers celebrating their Irish heritage in this country? What on earth does one’s sexual orientation have to do with a popular saint who, legend has it, drove the snakes out of Ireland?

More than likely, innumerable gays have been marching incognito in the famed stroll since the first parade was held in the colonial city in 1762. Gay rights groups, however, have been fighting court battles to get the right to march openly under their banner since 1991. Politicians risk censure from gay and lesbian organizations if they march in the Manhattan parade. Those who seek the support of these organizations march in Queens, which welcomes lesbians, gays, and transgenders in the Parade-for-All, which takes place weeks earlier.

It’s inevitable that just before March 17 we hear about a man-on-the-street poll asking, “Do you think gays should be allowed to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade?” The answer is always unanimously, “Of course,” which is the correct answer. However, because the parade actually has a specifically Catholic connection, shouldn’t the question be, “Do you think a group that endorses behavior contrary to church teaching should be able to march under a banner proclaiming that fact?”

It’s much easier to call the parade organizers homophobic and to claim persecution than to talk honestly about the core issue. The Catholic Church does not condemn same-sex love. There is never anything wrong with such a beautiful emotion. It does, however, limit its sanctioning of sexual activity to married couples and it views heterosexual acts outside of marriage as equally wrong as homosexual acts.

Why is it just this parade that carries the accusation of homophobia? I don’t recall similar campaigns or court battles involving other ethnic or nationalist celebrations. It’s obvious that it’s the involvement of the Catholic Church that creates the controversy, and again I have to ask, What does sexual orientation have to do with the parade unless it’s to express contempt for church teaching? I’ve always found church admonitions similar to benevolent parental warnings: Do not do this or else this will happen, etc. The fact is, monogamous married couples rarely suffer the misery of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and AIDS.

When I lived in Spanish Harlem in my youth, I used to watch all the Fifth Avenue parades, which usually began or ended around 96th Street. My favorite parade was the Armed Forces Day Parade, which had the best bands and the handsomest uniformed men from all the service branches, along with tanks and military hardware. I even have a photograph taken in 1964 of what appears to be a guided missile on a truck bed. It was our own May Day show of force and during the Cold War, a display that made us all feel a little safer. Anti-Vietnam War protesters pelting the marching soldiers with pig’s blood put an end to that parade.

Parading aside, March 17 in the 1960s and ’70s was the biggest night for singles bars like the Mad Hatter on the Upper East Side. Everyone wore green and girls drew shamrocks on their cheeks. These establishments were filled with visiting European rugby players; happy hour meant free drinks for the women; the jukeboxes blared hits from the Clancy Brothers, and “Danny Boy” inevitably sparked a drunken sing-along.

None of the bacchanalian excesses had anything to do with the religious parade, either, but at least the once-a-year feast day had the element of fun rather than being a reminder of a social agenda. I may not be Irish, but I can’t help but miss the way it used to be.