Pride and Prejudice: Legalizing Compulsory Heterosexuality in New York's Annual St. Patrick's Day Parades

This article discusses the successful legal exclusion of Irish lesbians and gays from the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York and explores the ideologies of nation-space and public space that underpin this exclusion. It argues that the progression through urban space of the marches enforces co...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Space and culture 2007-02, Vol.10 (1), p.94-114
Main Authors: Munt, Sally R., O'Donnell, Katherine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Festivals
Heterosexuality
Holidays
Irish
Law
Legal norms
Modernity
National Identity
Nationalism
New York
Public spaces
Social structure
U.S.A
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article discusses the successful legal exclusion of Irish lesbians and gays from the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York and explores the ideologies of nation-space and public space that underpin this exclusion. It argues that the progression through urban space of the marches enforces compulsory heterosexuality, through actual and semiotic exclusion. Irish American nationalism can be read as illustrative of the heterosexualization of nationalism. It was the unquestioned assumption that being homosexual is antithetical to being Irish that provided the fundamental premise from which it was logically and successfully argued in U.S. courts: that the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization is a violent, obscene enemy bent on the destruction of Irish ethnicity and Irish communities. By contrast, the article holds up the parades in Cork and Dublin as designated inclusive and multicultural events, the nation-space of the Irish Republic economically liberated and wishing to communicate modernity to its citizens.
ISSN:1206-3312
1552-8308
DOI:10.1177/1206331206296379