
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994                   TAG: 9403130125
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: B-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: BOSTON                                LENGTH: Short

PARADE CANCELED AS PROTEST AGAINST RULING

Organizers of Boston's annual St. Patrick's Day parade made it official Saturday: They will cancel next week's parade to protest a court order allowing gays and lesbians to march.

"They're not going to shove something down our face that's not our traditional values," said John Hurley, president of the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council.

Hurley said gay marchers would be excluded when the parade resumes next year. But Mayor Thomas M. Menino has said the city will sponsor the parade next year and will include the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston.

On Friday, the state Supreme Judicial Court upheld a lower court's ruling that a parade is a public event covered by a Massachusetts law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

- Associated Press

by CNB