“High Levels of Madness”: The Fight for LGBTQ Inclusion at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Fifth Avenue is the most significant expression of Irish culture and celebration in New York City. But for 25 years, beginning in 1991, the fight for LGBTQ participation was met with “high levels of madness.” This intergenerational talk will feature historian Emma Quinn and activist Brendan Fay, who will discuss this decades-long campaign and the importance of Irish LGBTQ visibility in St. Patrick’s Day celebrations around the city. Amanda Davis from the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project will moderate and there will be time for Q&A from the audience.

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About the Speakers

THE HISTORIAN: Emma Quinn is Assistant Professor and Learning and Curricular Services Librarian at St. John’s University. She has an MA in Irish and Irish-American Studies from NYU and an MLIS from Long Island University. Her research interests lie in the history of gender and sexuality in the Irish Catholic diaspora, with a focus on New York, as well as inclusive and accessible pedagogy.

THE ACTIVIST: Brendan Fay is an immigrant from Ireland and long-time resident of Astoria, Queens, where he lives with his spouse, Tom Moulton. He is a human rights activist and filmmaker whose employment as a Catholic high school teacher in Queens was terminated in 1991 for marching with the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Fifth Avenue. For 25 years, the Irish LGBTQ group he founded, Lavender and Green Alliance – Muintir Aerach na hÉireann, fought alongside others for the right to march openly in the parade, a fight that ended successfully in 2016. During that time, Fay also founded the inclusive St. Pat’s for All Parade, in Queens, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2025.

This free virtual program is part of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project’s “The Historian & The Activist: Cross-Cultural LGBTQ New York” series, made possible by a grant from Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is the first in a three-part series; subsequent programs will address contemporary cross-cultural LGBT identities within Puerto Rican and Jewish communities, and their connections to historic sites in NYC from the 1950s to 2000.