So you think St. Patrick’s Day is all about obnoxious straight people wearing green and drinking beer in public? Well, yes—but there are some very queer things indeed about the holiday.
I should know: I have a four-leaf clover tattooed on my butt (Seriously).
Herewith, are the top five reasons LGBTs should care about St. Patrick’s Day, happening Saturday, March 17. (And be sure to check out all of the best gay-themed St. Pat’s events listed on our sister site, GayCities):
1. The streets are awash in completely wasted, highly suggestible straight boys
It’s no secret that St. Patrick’s Day is basically an enabler of daytime alcohol consumption. There’s a reason the parade’s slogan is “Kiss Me I’m Irish”— it’s all about getting lucky!
For you gay guys and gals whose deepest fantasy is turning out a Hibernian hetero, St. Patrick’s Day is your chance. Boys: Find an outdoor area full of straight bros and see if one of them won’t smooch your Blarney Stone. And, ladies, straight girls are all about being exhibitionists. Buy them a few shots of Jameson, bribe the DJ to play “I Kissed A Girl,” and let the party begin.
Heck, if you go to a wild enough St. Paddy’s Day event, two dudes might even break-dance naked in front of a huge crowd, like Irish hip-hop brothers Jedward did in 2010 (link NSFW-ish).
2. It’s the one time us gays can stop caring about what we’re wearing.
“I think St. Patty’s day is a really good excuse to dress like a tool,” style maven and reality star Brad Goreski told Queerty. And it’s true: So long as it’s green and relatively unstained, you’re safe. (Fun fact: originally the color associated with Saint Patrick was blue.)
3. There are lots of famous gay Irish and Irish-Americans to raise a pint of Guinness to.
* Oscar Wilde (1854-1900, right): the quotable author and playwright spent most of his adult life as a dandy-about-town in London, but was born in Dublin.
* Francis Bacon (1909-1992): Perhaps the greatest artist to emerge from the Emerald Isle, Bacon was known for his abstract figure drawings and intense relationship with his muse and lover, George Dyer (played by Daniel Craig in the film Love is the Devil)
* Rosie O’Donnell (b. 1962) and Daniel O’Donnell (b. 1960): Rosie is the one-named talk-show host (obviously), but her out older brother Daniel is the first openly gay man elected to the New York State Assembly.
* Graham Norton (b. 1963): The UK’s version of Jay Leno, but gay—and actually funny—Norton hails from County Cork.
* Sinéad O’Connor (b. 1966): Though she’s bounced around the Kinsey scale, the controversial Irish singer announced she was a lesbian back in 2000.
* Christine Quinn (b. 1966): The influential New York City Council Speaker has all but announced her bid for mayor in 2013.
* Stephen Gately (1976-2009): One of the two lead singers of the popular British boy band Boyzone, Gately came out in a blaze of publicity in 1999 and wed his partner five years later. Sadly, Gately passed away in 2009 from an undiagnosed heart condition.
4. The St. Paddy’s Day parade is essentially an Irish version of a Pride parade.
Back in the 1800s and early 19oos, Irish immigrants suffered serious discrimination in the U.S—denied jobs and access to schooling, caricatured as uneducated alcoholics, and in some cases deemed an “inferior race” in comparison to Anglo-Saxons.
The St. Patrick’s Day Parade was a way for Irish-Americans to stand up and basically say “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” Only, y’know, without the whole “queer” party.
Of course LGBTs aren’t always welcome at St. Patrick’s Day parades: In 1995, the Supreme Court ruled that the organizers of Boston’s parade could turn away an LGBT group based on the First Amendment. (That’s okay, it also means we can ban anyone we want from a pride parades, too!)
New York’s queer population has bitten back at the homophobic organizers of Manhattan’s exclusionary march by organizing “St. Pat’s for All,” a parade in Queens where gay marchers are welcomed.
5. The life and legacy of St. Patrick himself is kinda gay.
Ah, St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, about whom so little is known but so much legend is legion. Only two of his letters remain in existence and one, Declaration, concerns charges made against him by fellow Christians during a trial. Historians don’t know what the charges were but Patrick made a point of returning gifts offered by wealthy women and paying for the sons of chiefs to accompany him on his sojourns. (Was he the Ancient World’s answer to George Alan Rekers?)
Plus, the two miracles most closely associated with St. Pat are pretty darn phallic when you think about it: Driving the snakes out of Ireland and turning his long, hard walking stick into a tree.
I’m just saying.
Photos via I Stole The TV, HotelsInIreland
The Real Mike in Asheville
Wow, what a weird post!
None of your 5 reasons for LGBT interest really have anything to do with being gay:
1) Sure there are some gay guys into horny straight drunks — but the vast majority of gays guys are into other gay guys who enjoy engaging in reciprocal sex play. I suspect the same is also true with women — mutual and reciprocal.
2) Most of us dress the very same way as straight guys, one leg at a time. Hip straight guys in NYC, SF, LA et al tend to be hipper than straight guys in Dallas and Kansas City — same as with gay guys. And, on St. Patrick’s Day, we all find something green to wear — if we are hip, it is a hip green; if we are just guys, there is a green workshirt.
3) Despite what the idiot president of Iran says, we here, we’re queer, in every culture and ethnicity worldwide. There are tens of thousands of gay Irish and Irish-Americans just like those from Italy, England, Germany, etc.
4) So the parade is somewhat like our pride parades, and that means what to us? Perhaps it’s important because the New York St. Patricks Parade committee has shit on the gay community for decades, but their legal victory does keep the anti-gays from the gay parade. Gay Irish and Irish-Americans, though, were not anti-Ireland nor anti-St. Patrick, so the comparison is certainly tilted against us.
5) As you point out, there is practically no personal information about St. Patrick, gay, straight, or otherwise. So, what’s the point?
**********************
And you missed the most obvious of why the LGBT community should look at the Irish: Ireland has, nation-wide, civil unions for same-sex couples and is moving toward full civil marriage equity. Latest public opinion surveys show 73% of the Irish public supports civil-marriage equity — and all of this in a country with 87% Catholic population. Drink to that!
Charlie in Charge
10 points to whoever thought to use the phrase “Hibernian hetero.” Love it
Irishboy
Boyzone. Irish boyband.
Pierre
Reason # 6: If you can’t BEAT ’em, join ’em!
Let’s face it St Patrick’s Day is THE holiday in March, and is now as American as Apple Pie.
Of all the nationalities who settled in America, the Irish are the only group that succeeded in transplanting their National holiday to America. You gotta give them credit for that. Happy St Patrick’s Day!
Christopher Banks
Our local bear bar in Auckland is having a St Pat’s Day bash – of course, it helps that the co-owner in Irish! https://www.facebook.com/events/195522950552078/
St Pat’s Day celebrations are very widespread in New Zealand.
David
Actually this article is wrong Oscar Wilde and Sinead O’Connor are bisexual not gay/lesbian. But what else can we expect from queerty besides biphobia and bisexual erasure?
Mike
I don’t know of any actual hetero or straight guys who have sex with men while drunk. Anyway nobody actually believes the “I was drunk!” excuse anymore since it just means the man or woman is bisexual or gay and closeted but it comes out when they’re drunk. No not all gay or bisexual men are even into reciprocal sex as Mike said. I know a lot of men who are oral or anal tops and they don’t bottom or suck anyone at all. There are even lesbian women who simply don’t give oral sex at all but will get it done to them.
LandStander
@David: We do not know if Oscar Wilde was bisexual or not actually. Yes, he was married to a woman, but so were many other gay men who have to hide who they really are. Being married to a women in a society that is so anti-gay, does not mean Oscar was not gay.
I would say there is an equal chance between him being gay and being bisexual. He will never be around in a world comfortable with homosexuality so we will never know for sure. 🙂
Sistercylon
Ever since my first boyfriend in college I have alway had a thing for Irish guys. I don’t know what it is: The black hair and blue eyes (black Irish?), the accent? I don’t know but they drive me crazy!
CBRad
What Manhattan gays love the most about St. Patrick’s Day is imagining pouring acid down on the parade.
Mrs.Bitch
I always thought the Irish were homophobic.
Facts
The Irish are not homophobic – certainly much less homophobic than Americans. The previous president of Ireland rejected an invitation to the parade in the states, explicitly stating that the reason for her rejection was the discrimination against gay people by the parade organizers. She also made an emotional appeal on a YouTube video in support of gay an lesbian people as she was leaving office. This is not an unusual attitude in Modern Ireland, the sort of rabid honophobia that is permitted on American airwaves is very difficult to find. I expect full marriage equality in the country within the next 5 years. Three quarters of the country currently support such legislation. The article says that Ireland is 87% Catholic, but not many of those people take the church seriously. Instead, that is simply the faith they were born into. Few go to mass. One more thing, I have never, ever thought of Patrick’s Day as a “straight” event. It’s really just about celebrating Irishness, that’s all. It has nothing to do with sexuality.
HM
According to ‘How The Irish Saved Civilization’, prior to Patrick’s arrival, a popular village past time was to wander down to Darby O’Gill square and watch the beefier townsmen insert their whatzsis into a horse. It was ‘Election By Beastiality’.
So boy on boy and girl on girl was pretty mild.
Timmmeeeyyy
You’re not really suggesting people take sexual advantage of someone who is wasted, are you?
How very date-rapey of you!
Jordan
Yet again queerty tries to make something that has nothing to do with sexuality or even LGBT people into something about LGBT people and it’s a miserable fail.
shannon
GUYS….IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE….DO —NOT—–HIT ON “DRUNK STRAIGHT GUYS”…..A STRAIGHT GUY WILL NOT….EVER….EVER…HAVE SEX WITH YOU….ANOTHER GUY!!!! THIS IS WHY PEOPLE THINK GAY MEN ARE SEXUAL PREDATORS……..DO NOT DO THIS!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS HOW YOU WILL GET YOURSELF HURT…OR KILLED!!! WHY DO YOU KEEP PUSHING MEN HERE TO MOLEST PEOPLE????? GODDAMN!!!!!! CAN WE NOT ACT LIKE DEVIANTS FOR A WHILE????
Robert in NYC
Perhaps this will provide some information about St. Patrick.
http://www.history.com/topics/who-was-saint-patrick
Idi Amin Dada
Damn. Some of you queens take a little fun-loving article a little too seriously.
Spencer
@Idl Amin Dada: agreed
The Real Mike in Asheville
@Idi Amin Dada: …so says the man who picks Idi Amin Dada as his moniker, a monster with a penchant to torturing children to death as sport…
Jordan
Well said Sharon, although I don’t know anyone stupid enough to actually do that.
Jawsch
This is one of the most ignorant articles to come out of Queerty. I mean, really?
The first point is probably the most idiotic and offensive. Are you seriously suggesting (even if in a joking manner) that gay men go out and try to turn heterosexual guys homosexual or at least try and “trick” them into having sex with them? I can’t believe I even dignify this website with my traffic.
Wtf Queerty. If the rest of the world didn’t hate the LGBT Community enough as is, telling queers to go out and get straight men drunk and try to trick them into having sex with you is just ridiculous and not to mention dangerous.
This is completely disgusting. If a man is going to have sex with you, drunk or sober, he’s not heterosexual. Simple as that.
marc
@Jawsch:
well said
“telling queers to go out and get straight men drunk and try to trick them into having sex with you is just RIDICULOUS and not to mention DANGEROUS”
Kieran
Evan baby, you can’t be too Irish if you don’t know the difference between a shamrock and a four-leaf clover. Shame on you lad.