NEW YORK -- About 100 gays and lesbians, protesting their exclusion from the St. Patrick's Day parade, were arrested Wednesday as they staged a sit-down demonstration an hour before the traditional march began up Fifth Avenue.
Members of the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, chanting 'Two, four, six, eight -- how do you know St. Patrick's straight?' sat down in the middle of Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets just south of the start of the parade route.
Scores of them were hauled off, including City Councilman Thomas Duane, who is gay and HIV-positive.
'Tom, Tom -- God bless you, Tom,' the demonstrators chanted as he was led away.
Police carried other protesters away on stretchers when they refused to walk, loading them into vans and a city bus.
'This day, March 17, 1993, will go down as the saddest St. Patrick's Day in New York history,' said Brenden Fay, an ILGO spokesman. 'Even in Dublin they are welcome as any other group.
Police initially put the number of arrests at 100, but added that another 35 people were arrested at 49th Street and Fifth Avenue, closer to the start of the parade and just one block from St. Patrick's Cathedral.
It was not immediately known if the smaller protest group was associated with the ILGO demonstartors.
The protests and a light rain did not delay thousands of Irish, Irish-Americans and honorary Irish from beginning the march up Fifth Avenue at 11 a.m. in the city's 232nd St. Patrick's Day parade.
Absent this year were some of the state's leading politicians who were boycotting the parade because of the ILGO ban.
Skirling bagpipe bands and green-clad marchers from all parts of the country and Ireland strolled past St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Cardinal John O'Connor stood on the steps to greet them.
