NEW YORK -- The City Council's first openly gay leader, who refused to participate in the nation's largest St. Patrick's Day Parade on Friday, blasted its chairman for remarks that compared gay Irish-American activists to neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and prostitutes.
"I don't even think they dignify a response," Council Speaker Christine Quinn said Thursday of chairman John Dunleavy's comments to The Irish Times.
Quinn said she already had decided not to join the 150,000 marchers on Fifth Avenue after organizers rejected her compromise attempts and barred an Irish gay and lesbian group for a 16th straight year.
"I can't deny who I am on any given day," said Quinn, who was arrested in 1999 for protesting at an exclusionary parade in the Bronx.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--stpatricksparade0317mar17,0,4415263.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyorkThis is just freaking nuts, I can't believe this Parade Organizer!!!