This year, New York City’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade will include an LGBT activists group, but not a pro-life group.
Even worse, in rejecting the application of a pro-life group, the parade organizers are going against their own promise — that pro-life groups will also march in the parade, as a quid pro quo for the organizers allowing in the homosexual group.
Lisa Bourne reports for LifeSiteNews, Feb. 17, 2015, that a homosexual activist group, Out@NBCUniversal, will be marching under its own banner in the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade led by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, but the parade has refused a pro-life group’s request to participate.
When Cardinal Dolan was appointed Grand Marshal of the parade, he excused the decision to allow Out@NBCUniversal to march under their banner by saying they were merely Catholics who were homosexually inclined, rather than advocates for sinful behavior. The group, however, is an overt promoter of same-sex ‘marriage.’
On January 22, the parade officially rejected the application from Children First Foundation (CFF), a pro-life adoption advocacy group, to march this year.
Elizabeth Rex
CFF president Dr. Elizabeth Rex is an adjunct bioethics professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, CT. In 2001, Dr. Rex founded Children First Foundation, a group that promotes and supports adoption, and sponsored “Choose Life” license plates in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C.
Dr. Rex said about the parade’s rejection of CFF’s application to march, “It’s absolutely been a double-cross.” Not only was the group refused, they had to get a lawyer to pursue the parade committee to find out the result of their application. And even then the parade committee waited until the very last day before the launch of legal action to respond.
When the parade committee announced in September that the homosexual group could march in the 2015 parade, it came with a policy change allowing groups to march under their own banner, which organizers called a “gesture of goodwill” toward the LGBT community. But the change in policy was supposed to also mean a pro-life group could march. In fact, on September 11, 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that parade spokesman William O’Reilly said a pro-life group would be allowed to march as part of a “deal” to permit the homosexual group to march.
The pro-life CFF had first applied to march in the 2015 parade last September, just after the policy change was made known.
On September 10, 2014, parade committee vice-chairman and Quinnipiac University President Dr. John Lahey said there would be no pro-life group in the 2015 parade, “That won’t be happening. What we want to do is keep 2015 focused on the gesture of goodwill we made towards the gay community with the inclusion of OUT@NBCUniversal.”
Last fall, Cardinal Dolan had deviated from his predecessors, who had stood firm in regard to Church teaching as it relates to the Irish Catholic-themed parade, by saying he had no problem with the decision to allow the LGBT group to march. More than that, Dolan called the decision a wise one. Shortly thereafter, Dolan was named the 2015 grand marshal, causing considerable disappointment among many Catholics.
The Catholic Church teaches that people with same-sex attractions must be treated with respect and dignity as children of God, but the Church also teaches that homosexual activity is intrinsically disordered and gravely immoral. Homosexuals, as are heterosexuals, are called to live chaste lives.
Bill Donohue, the feisty president of Catholic League — an organization fighting for the civil rights of Catholics and Christians — initially had given parade organizers a pass on the decision allowing the homosexual group in the parade because of the parade’s promise to include pro-life groups in the march. Donohue also stood by the Dolan’s decision to be grand marshal.
But now, Donohue pulled the Catholic League, a longtime parade participant, out of the parade. He told Newsmax that the Catholic League would never march again because parade organizers had “double-crossed” him: “To be specific, I asked them to pledge that a pro-life Catholic group would also be permitted. I was told that a formal change in the rules had been approved and that a pro-life group would march. Now I am being told that the list of marching units is set and that no pro-life group will march in next year’s parade. Accordingly, I have decided to withdraw our participation. The gays made the cut and they said no to the pro-lifers.”
Sign a petition to Cardinal Dolan to stop the St. Patrick’s Day scandal here.
NY Cardinal Dolan’s mansion
Many U.S. archbishops live in palatial mansions. Cardinal Timothy Dolan leads the pack with this 15,000-square-foot mansion on Madison Avenue, in one of the priciest corridors of Manhattan. The neo-Gothic mansion, reportedly filled with thick red carpets and priceless antiques, is estimated by Vanderbilt Appraisal Company to be worth at least $30 million. (CNN)
~Éowyn
