NEW YORK - Bonnets both elegant and zany took center stage at this year's Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue - along with spirited talk about Christ's resurrection and gay marriage.

It was "a real New York spectacle", said John Leone, a Long Island electrician who came on Sunday with his native Ecuadorean wife and two young daughters - and their over-the-top hats.

Victoria Leone, 7, and her 8-year-old sister Valentina wore huge white domes, fashioned from pastel Froot Loops and marshmallow Peeps attached to white plaster that had been shaped around a balloon.

The family joined thousands of people from around the world who had gathered for the midtown Manhattan celebration.

Some showed off their Easter finery, others wore costumes that might have appeared in a circus sideshow.

Sitting atop Mike Revenaugh's thrift-shop straw hat was a miniature Ferris wheel filled with Lego figures, on a lawn of fake grass graced by plastic eggs.

In his multicolored striped jacket, the 28-year-old graduate student had no plans to attend a religious service. "It's a little difficult, with this equipment," he said.

Starting on Sunday morning, the parade stretched a dozen city blocks up and down Fifth from St. Patrick's Cathedral, the seat of New York's Roman Catholic Archdiocese. The church was packed for a pre-noon Mass celebrated by Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

Many of the faithful wore beautiful traditional bonnets.

But the joyous revelry was mixed with some dissent - and sorrow.

Gay activists stood in front of the cathedral protesting ecclesiastical opposition to same-sex marriage, while honoring those who had lost their lives because of prejudice.

Among the victims was 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge in September. Prosecutors say he committed suicide after his sexual encounter with a man in his dorm room was captured on a webcam allegedly by a roommate who tried to broadcast it online.

Associated Press