Boston Mayor appears hopeful for agreement between St Patrick’s Day organisers and gay veterans
The Mayor of Boston has continued pushing for a group of gay veterans to be allowed to march in the St Patrick’s Day parade in his city, and appeared hopeful that the group would be able to strike a deal with organisers.
Mayor Martin Walsh made the announcement on Wednesday, that he intended to reach a deal with parade organisers to allow gay military veterans to march, and that if they were not allowed to, he would not rule out a boycott of the parade.
Over the weekend, Mayor Walsh appeared to be making headway, and hoped that the gay veterans would end talks with parade organisers, the Allied War Veterans Council, to be allowed to march.
He said: “It’s up to the two sides now to sit down and have a conversation. The balls in their court so hopefully they’ll be able to come up with some compromises there.”
Walsh described a potential decision to allow gay groups to participate in 2014 as “long overdue”.
Organisers of the parade had previously said they will continue to exclude gay and lesbian groups, pointing to a US Supreme Court ruling in 1995 which allowed such discrimination.
They had gone further to say that Walsh does not have the power to go against that ruling.
