Another toast to St. Pat's ruling

They made speeches over plates of scrod and bowls of barley soup at South Boston's venerable Farragut House and clapped one another on the back. The host wore a gold lapel pin with the imprint ''9-0" and passed out commemorative bronze medallions and reminded the guests that they had been right 10 years ago and that for once the nation's authorities had agreed with them.

In a celebration that has become an annual ritual in South Boston, about a dozen neighborhood residents gathered yesterday to mark the 10th anniversary of a unanimous US Supreme Court ruling allowing organizers of the neighborhood's St. Patrick's Day parade to ban an Irish-American gay and lesbian group from marching.

''It was the right decision," said Joseph R. Nolan, the retired Supreme Judicial Court justice who cast the lone dissenting vote when the Massachusetts court ruled against the parade organizers. ''It was correct. I was right, and you kept going, God bless you."

South Boston's fight to keep the gay group out of the St. Patrick's Day parade touched off controversy and vehement emotions toward a neighborhood that was already seen by many as exclusionary. A decade later, after the neighborhood has lost fights over waterfront development, after swank bars have replaced old watering holes and luxury condominiums have replaced a local cathedral, the group in South Boston yesterday spoke of the reversal of the SJC ruling in glowing terms.

''It's a day that shouldn't go unremembered," said John ''Wacko" Hurley, the parade's organizer, who had 9-0, signifying the US Supreme Court's unanimous ruling, imprinted on his business cards after the 1995 decision. ''It was too important."

He was joined at the luncheon by Councilor James M. Kelly of South Boston; Chester Darling, the lawyer who fought the case; and Eleanor Hulak, the grand marshal of the 1993 parade. That was the second year that organizers voted to prohibit the gay group from participating, saying the 92-year-old event was a family parade, steeped in traditional values. Two years and several courtrooms later, the Supreme Court overturned the state's highest court, saying the parade was an expression of its organizers and therefore protected free speech.

The decision's anniversary is not observed by many in the gay community, though one of the plaintiffs in the original suit, Cathleen Finn, said it remains a thorn in her side.

''I think about it every St. Patrick's Day," said Finn, who is bisexual and married her female partner last year. ''It's something that I think Boston needs to, at some time, rectify, in terms of having an inclusive St. Patrick's Day parade. I feel strongly that I will live to see the day that that happens."

Other gay-rights activists said the anniversary luncheon yesterday was maddening, despite same-sex couples having won the right to marry in Massachusetts.

''Displays such as this just go to show how far we still have to go on the road to equality," said Marty Rouse, campaign director for MassEquality, a gay-rights advocacy group.

In the dark wood-paneled dining room on P Street, Hurley and the others didn't spend much time talking about exclusion. They said their battle was always about the First Amendment and not discrimination. They spoke of the old days, of nearly running out of money and of the attention from the media, news crews around the clock at organizers' houses. They related tales about the judges who ruled against them. One told a story of a judge who asked Darling during one courtroom debate whether he was showing contempt for the court. Darling, according to the teller, replied, ''Frankly, judge, I'm trying to hide it."

Nolan, whose dissenting opinion for the SJC contended that forcing parade organizers to include groups they didn't want would violate the US Constitution, said yesterday that his fellow justices should have ruled with him, in favor of the neighborhood.

''I was a complete flop here in Massachusetts; I couldn't get even one other vote," he said.

Several members of the group said that if another gay rights group wanted to march in next year's parade, they would still fight all the way to the Supreme Court to keep it out. ''The principles that held true then still hold true today," Kelly said. ''I have such tremendous admiration for the people sitting at this table."

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.