BEING an Irish American weekly, your coverage of the never-ending controversy over the inclusion of the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) in the annual New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade is extensive throughout each year. 

While I believe that everyone has a right to do want they want in the privacy of their own bedroom, I totally oppose the radical agenda espoused by this country’s gay and lesbian movement. 

However, on the issue of gays and lesbians in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, I must unequivocally side with the Irish and Irish American gay and lesbians who have been fighting so hard and so long for the right to march in the parade under their own banner.

I support ILGO’s inclusion in the parade because the reasoning of the Ancient Order of Hibernians is illogical and hypocritical. The AOH continually invokes their adherence to Catholic doctrine as the reason for not allowing the gays to march. The AOH is guilty of “pick-and-choose” Catholicism.

There are countless AOH members in Congress and state government who support the right to legal abortion. Why are they so concerned with Catholic beliefs when it comes to non-AOH members like gays, but when their very own AOH “brothers” support the horrific practice of abortion, they turn a blind eye. 

In fact, some of these members are featured in articles in the AOH publication The National Hibernian Digest. About nine years ago, Senator Edward Kennedy wrote an editorial in the publication which was accompanied by a big photograph of him; it was obvious that the AOH was proud of having Senator Kennedy among its members. 

Not only does Kennedy support abortion, he supports taxpayer funded abortion, partial-birth abortion and opposes parental consent laws for minors seeking abortion. 

Furthermore, in a famous incident, Kennedy addressed a rally of gay and lesbian activists on the night before President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 and told them, “You are the reason that President Clinton won.” Why doesn’t the AOH discipline Kennedy and the countless other AOH members in public office who support both gay rights and abortion rights?

It is unfair for the AOH to single out the gays and lesbians when this “Catholic” organization does nothing about its own members who are in conflict with the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

John Sharkey, Danbury, Connecticut

Let U.S. Pay for Evil

THE U.S. and Britain showed total disregard for the authority of the UN and decided to go to war against Iraq, creating the appalling mess they now find themselves in.

At the time of the invasion Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld labeled the UN useless and ineffective, but just six months later the U.S. is begging for their help. If the UN sends troops (which I’m sure they won’t) it’ll only help Bush and his hawks Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney to extricate themselves from this self-inflicted disaster.

The only thing I’m in (shock and awe) of is the list of casualties the U.S. is suffering on a daily basis. Before the war the U.S. and British governments lied about weapons of mass destruction. Now they’re telling us it’s all about terrorism.

The costs are rising, the elections are getting closer. Why should the rest of the world now bail them out? I say let them suffer the consequences of their evil deeds.

Sean McPhillips, College Point, New York

Bush, Greed and Power

I APPLAUD Dermot Murray for his letter in the September 3-9 issue, “Our Right to Dissent,” describing the hijacking of our government by President George W. Bush and his right wing lackeys.

Terrorism in Iraq is now thriving courtesy of the chaos brought about by an ill-planned, ill-conceived war, sold by liars for oil profits and the resulting prodigious corporate welfare for their associates in the weapons manufacturing and oil service industries.

The Bush administration, motivated by greed and power, gives not a flying damn for the Iraqi people. The propaganda about human rights and democracy by this group of manipulative “neo-conmen” on their knees to Mammon is blatant hypocrisy.

If our corporate-media were doing its job, it would ask what is behind the changes in U.S. foreign policy – to preemptive war and control of occupied countries, and domestically to ever-larger Pentagon budgets and increasing restrictions on American freedoms.

These changes reflect the growing influence on government of multi-national corporations, with their goal of dominating crucial portions of the world to control oil and other vital resources. The elimination of conservation programs and rejection of international environmental commitments fit this pattern.

This corporate takeover of government should be of deep concern to all Americans. Under Bush we are no longer a government of, by and for the people. We have become a government of by and for the corporate lobbies.

Instead of a democracy, we are fast becoming a corporate/military dictatorship!

James V. Burke, Sayreville, New Jersey

Time to Organize

ALL decent people will sympathize with the anonymous undocumented reader who wrote the “Illegals Deserve Respect” letter in last week’s issue. His (or her) story is all too common. 

But he has more options than writing anguished letters to ethnic newspapers. One, he can reach out to a union and organize. Under present (unjust) U.S. labor law, organizing a union is hard but, fact is, an illegal worker with a union behind him has more rights than one with no union.

Two, as you will see when tens of thousands of immigrants, illegal and legal, gather at Flushing Meadow Park on October 4, he can join a national mass movement for immigrant worker rights. Beginning September 20, hundreds of immigrant workers and their union and community allies will board buses as part of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in a massive nationwide event sponsored by the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions, and created by Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees, the very union that organizes hotel and tavern workers.

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, from September 20-October 4, is modeled after the 1961 freedom rides of the U.S. civil rights movement in which student activists from across the country rode buses into the deep south to challenge segregation. 

Participants on the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, who include immigrants and their allies, will mobilize national support for changing immigration policy to create a road to citizenship for all immigrant workers, allow immigrant workers to reunite their families, ensure immigrants’ civil rights and liberties, and protect the rights of immigrants in the workplace. 

The Freedom Ride also will put immigration issues squarely on the national political agenda while encouraging greater participation by immigrants, whatever their immigration status, in the civic life of the nation. 

For more information go to the AFL-CIO website at www.aflcio.org.

Joe Jamison, President, Irish American Labor Coalition, New York, New York