The Boston parade that took its case for banning gays to the Supreme Court and won, later banned certain veterans as well.

As Will Swaim writes below, the organizers of the Long Beach Veterans Day Parade can rely on a 1995 Supreme Court decision in a case originating in Boston, which declared such events to be private. And while it’s true, as Will notes, that this sort of private event makes use of public resources, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that by itself does not change the event’s status. In 1995, gay citizens of Boston learned that the court-sanctioned distinction meant the city’s biggest St. Patrick’s Day Parade could reject them, and nothing could be done about it. A group of Boston-area veterans learned the same lesson eight years later.

In the first legal challenge to the policy of the parade’s sponsor– the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, a private nonprofit group– excluding gays, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, held that because the parade used so many city resources (the streets, the police for crowd control, etc.), it fell under the law prohibiting discrimination in “any place of public accommodation, resort, or amusement.” Following that decision, which was handed down in 1992, John “Wacko” Hurley, the parade’s lead organizer, announced his group would cancel the parade, rather than march with openly gay Bostonians. Hurley also took his case to the federal courts, and three years later, the Supreme Court decision in Hurley v. Irish-American Glb, Inc., established the right of such parades to ban anyone, even if the decision is made for reasons that would otherwise violate laws prohibiting discrimination. The parade, a triumphant Wacko announced, was back on.

Gays, of course, were the first to be banned from the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. But in an ironic twist, the next to banned by Wacko and the South Boston Allied War Veterans was a group of fellow veterans.

In 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, Boston Veterans for Peace applied to march in the parade. They were rejected. Wacko told the Veterans for Peace they didn’t have an “appropriate message”, and explained his decision to the Boston Globe by saying “you still have to go along with the leaders in Washington.”

That one group of veterans would reject another group of veterans came as a shock to some, as the Globe reported.

Anthony F. Flaherty, a Boston Veterans for Peace member who was born and raised in South Boston, took last week’s rejection personally. Years ago, [Wacko] Hurley was best man at his wedding. When Flaherty’s 25 years in the Navy overlapped with Hurley’s for four years, the two spent their days off together. ”No veteran who has seen action would deny a fellow veteran, a buddy, respect and the right to march,” said Flaherty, whose time in the military included three years in Vietnam. ”I have seen young men die. . . . I’m a retired naval officer and a combat vet, and I daresay I have more legitimacy than those who are denying us the right.”

The parade hit the streets of Boston on March 16, 2003, without the Veterans for Peace. Three days later, the war began.

More than four years later, the war still being fought, and another a group of veterans is being rejected by a parade, for lacking an “appropriate message”.

Tags: , Boston, gay, John "Wacko" Hurley, Long Beach, Massachusetts, St. Patrick's Day Parade, Supreme Court, Veteran for Peace, Veterans Day Parade