I have compiled a list of ways that we can all celebrate St. Patrick’s Day without the traditional venues of pubs and parades. Please feel free to add to this list in the comments.

1. Dye the water green before you wash your hands.
2. Watch movies with fake Irish people and determine which one does the worst Irish accent. Here are some suggestions:
   1. Brad Pitt in The Devil’s Own
   2. Tom Cruise in Far and Away
   3. Sean Connery in The Untouchables
3. Compete with your neighbors to grab the last box of Lucky Charms cereal off the grocery store shelves. Bonus: this is good exercise, too!
4. Make a list of all the things St. Patrick could have potentially vanquished from Ireland, in addition to snakes. For example, some of my Twitter friends hate mushy peas, and would probably have appreciated St. Patrick vanquishing improperly cooked peas.
5. If you’re Irish American, you can spend time pondering what “percentage” Irish you are. Kill time!
6. Read Irish newspapers and see what a country with a leader other than Donald Trump is doing to protect its citizens. I know Leo Varadkar isn’t anyone’s idea of a visionary, take-charge leader, but feck sake, he’s better than the Dotard-in-Chief.
7. Replay video of Ian Paisley  denouncing Pope John Paul II as the antichrist.
8. Re-read some of Paisley’s more colorful denunciations of Catholicism. My favorite: “Priest Murphy, speak for your own bloodthirsty, persecuting, intolerant, blaspheming, politic-religious papacy, but do not dare to pretend to be the spokesman of free Ulster men . . . Go back to your priestly intolerance, back to your blasphemous Masses, back to your beads, holy water, holy smoke and stinks and remember . . we know your church to be the mother of harlots and the abominations of the Earth.”
9. Tell Irish jokes to everyone you live with. There are many repositories online. The bonus points for the person who can use the word “cunt” the most times in a single joke.
10. Try to grow potatoes in your garbage can. Here are instructions. 

According to the Times, Larry Cummings, the bigoted president of the Staten Island St. Patrick’s Day parade committee, stated, “Our parade is for Irish heritage and culture. It is not a political or sexual identification parade.” He later said, “Here’s the deal, it’s a nonsexual identification parade and that’s that. No, they are not marching. Don’t try to keep asking a million friggin’ questions, OK?”

Cummings’s statements are total bullshit, though, because by banning displays of LGBTQ+ identity, he IS politicizing the event, and he IS making it a sexual display–heterosexual only. His remarks are naive at best, and pathetically disingenuous at worst. Fuck this guy.

Some Catholic officials have distanced themselves from the event, claiming that the the parade doesn’t represent the Catholic church. Good for them for not being overt bigots. But the official policy of the Catholic church continues to be to refuse to perform or recognize same-sex marriages. So, therefore, zero points given to Pope Francis for his “Who am I to judge?” remark. In fact, no points will be given until Pope Francis stands up in public–I’d prefer it to happen on Easter Sunday–and declare that God loves gays (why else would He keep making them?).

To imply, as the organizers of this parade are doing, that it is celebrating Irish culture WHILE refusing to recognize LGBTQ+ individuals AS SUCH shows a disgusting disregard for the heritage these idiots claim to be celebrating. Ireland in 2020 is not the Ireland of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and Éamon de Valera. To the contrary, Ireland legalized same-sex marriage through a referendum in 2015. It’s out-going taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, is an openly gay Irish man. As a whole, Ireland welcomes the queer community–policies of the dumbass Catholic church aside.

This kind of attitude, as perpetuated by Larry Cummings, is the same attitude that keeps religious animosity endemic in certain elements of Irish and Irish-American society. “Irish” and “Catholic” are not synonymous. There are Irish Protestants and Irish Jews and Irish Muslims. You can be queer and be Irish; you can be hetero and be Irish. In my considerable experience living in Belfast and Dublin, as well as earning a PhD in Irish history, I can testify that Ireland has changed a lot–it is a society that values liberal individualism, and it is open to all kinds of people.

This representation of “Irish” heritage that we will see on Staten Island is an archaic manifestation of de Valera’s “comely maidens” bullshit. In fact, I would argue that de Valera’s narrow-minded idealistic view of Ireland never did exist. Statistics on sexual activity and pregnancy outside of marriage bear this out, among many other trends.

Staten Island’s Paddy’s Day parade, and Larry Cummings in particular, need to cop the fuck on. Let the LGBTQ+ community represent their Irish heritage AND their queerness in the parade.