This year, for the first time, Staten Island will host a St. Patrick’s Day parade that allows L.G.B.T.Q. delegations to participate, a move that brings to a close a yearslong dispute between gay groups and parade organizers across the city over who can join in public celebrations of the patron saint of both Ireland and Catholic New York.
The original Staten Island parade has been the last holdout in a culture-war conflict that, for many New Yorkers, has felt settled for a decade.
The ban on L.G.B.T.Q. groups in the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan was lifted in 2014. But organizers of the parade on Staten Island have insisted that gay groups do not belong at an event for a Catholic saint. That led to years of bitter debates and boycotts.
To resolve that discord, Mayor Eric Adams’s office on Thursday announced that the city’s least populous and most conservative borough would now be home to two St. Patrick’s Day parades: the existing parade, held on March 2, and a new parade open to L.G.B.T.Q. groups that will be held on March 17.
Kayla Mamelak, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said the Adams administration believed that “celebrations in our city should be welcoming and inclusive.”
Ms. Mamelak said the new parade would be organized by the Staten Island Business Outreach Center, a nonprofit community development organization. Mr. Adams will attend the new St. Patrick’s Day parade, his office said.
“Everyone interested — regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, race or beliefs — will be welcome to march together,” Ms. Mamelak said.
In a statement, the business outreach center said the new event, which it called the Forest Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade, would “not only enhance the vibrancy of our community but also serve as a shining example of unity for the entire city.”
The group said it hoped all New Yorkers would “join us in embracing this revamped tradition.”
Mr. Adams has boycotted the Staten Island parade since he took office. His predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, also boycotted the parade, as have almost all Democratic elected officials in the New York region and several Staten Island Republicans.
The parade in Manhattan, which will be held on March 16, is a major public event, drawing an estimated 150,000 marchers and two million spectators each year. It is the oldest and largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world.
The Staten Island parade is a far smaller affair, drawing a crowd measured in thousands instead of millions. But it remains an important event for local families and businesses, and L.G.B.T.Q. groups in the borough said their exclusion from it was painful.
For years, Carol Bullock, the executive director of the Pride Center of Staten Island, applied to join the parade with her group and was rejected. When the new organizers invited the group to participate, her response was “heck yeah,” she said.
“I am so happy we have taken this parade back for the Staten Island community,” Ms. Bullock said. “I am finally going to march down Forest Avenue with my staff, my board, our supporters and our banner and celebrate our Irish heritage.”
Critics of the Staten Island parade have objected not only to its policy on L.G.B.T.Q. groups, but also to the sometimes aggressive methods by which it has enforced it.
In 2020, parade organizers barred individual participants from the event and even physically ejected people based on what they perceived to be their sympathies for gay and transgender people. Among those prevented from marching were Madison L’Insalata, who had come out as bisexual after being crowned Miss Staten Island, and a Republican member of the City Council who wore a rainbow-flag lapel pin.
The main organizer of the Staten Island parade, Larry Cummings, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. But he has spoken bluntly about the parade in the past to newspapers serving Staten Island or the Irish diaspora.
“Our parade is for Irish heritage and culture,” Mr. Cummings told The Irish Voice, a newspaper in New York City, in 2018. “It is not a political or sexual identification parade.”
And in 2020, he chastised The Staten Island Advance for continuing its coverage of the parade controversy.
“Here’s the deal, it’s a nonsexual identification parade and that’s that. No, they are not marching,” he said. “Don’t try to keep asking a million friggin’ questions, OK?”
