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NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio with Panti at the St Pat's Day for All parade John Kenny via Vine

"No biggie": Rory O'Neill honoured at New York ceremony

Earlier, his alter-ego Panti made an appearance at the St Pat’s For All parade in Queens.

RORY O’NEILL, whose alter-ego is drag queen Panti, was honoured at a ceremony in New York today.

Panti tweeted – with tongue firmly in cheek – that the event was “no biggie”, but O’Neill was clearly delighted with the honour.

The ceremony took place after Panti made an appearance at the inclusive St Pat’s For All parade in Queens, a celebration of St Patrick’s Day that’s open to all members of the community in NYC.

Among those attending was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who declined to attend the NYC Saint Patrick’s Day parade on 17 March last year due to a ban on LGBT groups.

The New York Times reported on 4 February that de Blasio won’t be attending this year because of the continuing ban.

Also attending the St Pat’s For All parade were the members of the New York City council who are boycotting the larger St Patrick’s Day parade.

Honoured

Today, O’Neill received an honourary Proclamation at New York City Hall, and tweeted:

image

Rory O’Neill and Panti have become worldwide names after Panti made a stirring speech on the Abbey stage during the ‘noble call’ in the show The Risen People.

This followed controversy over O’Neill’s comments about homophobia in Ireland while on RTÉ’s the Saturday Night Show.

The comments led to a payout by RTÉ to members of the Iona Institute.

In turn, this led to a larger debate about homophobia in Ireland, with members of the Dáil, TDs John Lyons and Jerry Buttimer speaking to the house about their own experiences of homophobic abuse.

During his trip to NYC, O’Neill also met actor Alan Cumming, who described the Mayo native as “a legend!”

image

Read: Watch Panti’s powerful speech about oppression of gay people>

Read: Panti: I’m expecting an apology from RTE>

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99 Comments
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    Mute Stanley Groves
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    Sep 10th 2012, 8:00 AM

    More natural forests are needed

    52
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    Mute Nun on Yokes
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    Sep 10th 2012, 8:45 AM

    Instead of plastic ones.

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    Mute EMD
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    Sep 10th 2012, 8:26 AM

    Are they talking about forests or the sterile non-native conifer plantations which blight our landscape and threaten the survival of species such as Hen Harrier? Judging the reasoning behind the groups in question I’m reckoning they’re talking about the plantations rather than native or semi-natural woodlands rich in biodiversity.

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    Mute the truth hurts
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    Sep 10th 2012, 7:40 AM

    Special branch should look into this.

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    Mute Aidan Geraghty
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    Sep 10th 2012, 8:19 AM

    i think they are on leave at the moment

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    Mute Conor Conneally
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    Sep 10th 2012, 8:40 AM

    Its not the number of trees being planted but how bio diverse the forests are. Acres of conifer plantations do more environmental harm than good

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    Mute Peter
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    Sep 10th 2012, 9:48 AM

    especially to rivers, the massive amounts of sulfer put in the soil runs off and drops the Ph of rivers ruining spawning grounds

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    Mute Jim Jameson
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    Sep 10th 2012, 9:47 AM

    Here we go, a report to soften us up for the privitisation of Coillte, the largest single landowner in the State

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    Mute Pat Casey
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    Sep 10th 2012, 9:53 AM

    Sounds about right.

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    Mute Declan Noonan
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    Sep 10th 2012, 12:10 PM

    That’s a great pic of lough Tay in county Wicklow. A member of the Guinness family has a wonderful house down there, although he may have passed away. I have cycled and hiked over these Wicklow mountains and really feel that they should be covered in forests. This land was covered at one time with oak and other trees. The govt needs to get the finger out and start to increase Irish woodlands. If you leave the land alone the trees will come back naturally.

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    Mute Mick Collins
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    Sep 10th 2012, 11:57 AM

    Jim Jameson
    Why would you need to be softened up for a Government sale of the collet harvesting rights? Have you seen the appalling Annual Reports over the last few years?
    In 2011 they had sales of 259 m and only managed a profit of 19.9m and this is with free land a story wen a massive one million acres.
    Worse than this their pension fund has a shortfall of nearly a hundred million Euro. How do you manage that trick with just one thousand employees? The answer is simple ……..make it a publicly owned enterprise and they’ll just milk it for all it’s worth.
    See the harvesting rights for up to two billion and let someone else do the real job of managing the business as that clearly hasn’t been done for some time.
    We get to keep the land. We get money for new investment in the economy and the workers get their pension funds fixed.
    With proper management exports will increase and the State will accrue further profit taxes.
    Simple.

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    Mute Mick Collins
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    Sep 10th 2012, 11:58 AM

    ….sell the harvesting rights….. Mea culpa

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