What I Saw at Boise Pride

What pain hides beneath bright colors and garish costumes?

Last Sunday, while many Idahoans were at church, and others were solemnly commemorating 9/11, I was at Cecil B. Andrus Park watching a celebration of a different sort. I came to some surprising conclusions throughout that day.

Social conservatives described Boise Pride Fest 2022 as a filth fest and a child grooming event. LGBTQ+ activists and their friends in local media described it as fun and family friendly, and portrayed any criticism as hate.

What if both sides are correct? What if we are all viewing the same events through vastly different lenses? How does that affect our messaging on this issue?

Standing on the street corner and watching participants preparing for the parade, I saw hundreds of rainbow flags, balloons, and all sorts of garish costumes. The Mayor of Boise walked the parade wearing a ridiculous outfit. I had a realization that this must have been what the hippie movement of the 1960s and 70s was like. This was a public freakout, Twelfth Night, or Halloween, a time to cast off adult pretensions and act completely childish and carefree.

The Honorable Mayor Lauren McLean

Just as the hippies of half a century ago could not comprehend why the squares looked down on their fun, so do the participants of the pride festival wonder why anyone would object to their revelry. In their eyes, these activities are purely innocent, affirming, inclusive, loving, and fun. If anyone has a problem with that, they must be some sort of hate filled human being. It is therefore no wonder that they characterize us as Nazis, Fascists, racists, and whatever other synonym for evil they can think of.

They truly do not understand why we have a problem with their pride. We need to keep this in mind as we engage in discussion on this topic.

When they advertised this event as innocent fun and family friendly they are not deliberately lying. Andrus Park was full of bright colors, silly costumes, and dozens of booths handing out candy and trinkets. Most everyone there was in a merry mood. People of all ages were there, and they all seemed to be having fun. Most of the people at the festival seemed to be friendly and kind. Since I did not present myself in a hostile manner, I received no hostile response.

Besides a hippie commune, the event also reminded me of a football game. Consider that die-hard fans of college or pro football will pack a stadium, paint their faces, wear silly outfits, and let themselves go a little bit crazy for a few hours. I believe the pride festival tapped into the same vein of human nature.

I say all this so people understand where I am coming from. Having now seen a pride festival firsthand, I get it. I understand why it attracts people, and I see why the LGBTQ+ community does not understand why we have a problem with it.

What is the problem, then? Why do we want to rain on this parade? Why did thousands of concerned conservatives demand that sponsors withdraw from this supposedly innocent and carefree party?

Much of the attention after the fact has been on the protests and counter-protests that occurred. Protests were fairly subdued, perhaps because we had already won a victory by getting the child drag show canceled. Some conservatives held signs on the south side, and some Catholics were praying the rosary across from the Capitol. Both groups were harassed, mocked, and verbally abused by counter-protestors. One of the mockers was dressed as a bat, another wore a shirt that said “Hail Satan,” and they all made rude comments to both groups.

The vile counter-protestors were definitely not the majority of festival-goers. I presume that these people show up to every controversial event, hoping to get attention and cause conservatives to clutch their pearls in shock. Most of them did not take part in the festival itself - they spent the entire day yelling at protestors. Yet their tactics worked - conservative media dutifully published their pictures and implied that they were the norm, which was clearly not the case.

This has two effects. First, it distracts conservatives from what is really going on. We breathlessly share pictures of satanists and say “this is what we oppose,” meanwhile the LGBTQ+ community simply dismisses our complaints, because they know that those people do not represent the community as a whole. Second, it serves as a shield for the activists themselves, who are spared from having to defend what is really going on beneath the surface.

I believe the bright colors, garish costumes, and sense of fun are a veneer covering a deep well of pain, depression, heartache, and sickness.

A flower I was given at the festival. Like the pride movement itself, bright colors are laid over something that was once alive and beautiful, but is now dying.

The hippies of the 1960s who were were experiencing free love, mind-altering drugs, and carefree joy did not want to deal with the consequences of their choices. They did not want to hear about the STDs, addiction, and emptiness that were the fruits of their actions. So too do the participants of pride festivals not want to confront the consequences of their lifestyles.

I saw many broken people at the park that day, despite the smiling faces. In fact, the festival seemed to draw all sorts of folks who would have otherwise felt left out of normal society. These are the people who would have been bullied at school, or never fit in the workplace. They are looking for love and acceptance. Misfits from all walks of life have made common cause, hoping to alter society so that they not only fit in, but dominate. “Celebrate the queer joy,” one person said on stage. “This is community, this is family, this is love, this is joy, and joy is the revolution!”

The first drag queen storyteller read a book about a Hispanic immigrant who felt isolated in school. The antagonists of the story were his heartless teacher and classmates, rich white Americans who simply did not understand this strange foreigner. Beyond the usual demonization of white people, the point of the book was to teach children that it is okay to be different and to take pride in their own heritage. That is all laudable. But I believe the intended message was that every possible difference is something worth taking pride in. After all, that is the point of pride - be proud of who you are, no matter what.

What if there are some choices and lifestyles that should not be celebrated?

For example, many of the attendees last weekend were extremely overweight. Obesity is a nationwide problem and not confined to any social or political class, but there has been a push on the left to normalize obesity, to destigmatize it, to say that it is just another identity with no connection to health or longevity. Whereas being healthy and attractive was once considered aspirational, now we are told to celebrate fatness. The end result is a parade featuring scantily clad obese men and women dancing provocatively, taking pride in their infirmity.

Obviously, overweight people should not face stigmatism or unequal treatment. But should such a lifestyle be celebrated? A healthy society would say no. Rather than restructuring our society from top to bottom to accommodate unhealthy lifestyles, we should instead encourage good health.

Not all fetishes are worth celebrating. There are many things that people enjoy in private - I see no reason to discuss them here - that should not be dramatized in public parks. Privacy, modesty, and propriety are concepts that seem old fashioned these days. To us, the idea that children should be sheltered from sexual imagery and ideas, especially at very young ages, goes without saying. But many of those who celebrate LGBTQ+ pride see that sheltering as normalizing a cisheteronormative worldview.

You see, queer activists believe that there is no such thing as normal. They firmly believe that children must be exposed to alternate sexualities at an early age so as to awaken the possibility of their own queerness. Anything less is simply maintaining the existing white patriarchal cishetero power structure.

It sounds absurd, but they are deadly serious. What we call protecting childhood innocence, they call maintaining privilege. Perhaps the children who were present at the pride festival are not fully aware of what it means to be homosexual, bisexual, transgender, or any of the other identities that make up the queer community. At least I hope so. Yet the whole point of bringing them here is to associate these ideas with bright colors and fun activities before they have the experience and cognition to understand what it really means.

This is the literal definition of grooming: exposing children to sexual content at an early age so as to normalize it in their developing brains. They call it equity and inclusion; we call it perversion. This is an uncrossable divide.

The second drag queen storyteller read a book called Introducing Teddy. In this book, a boy’s teddy bear is sad, and when he asks why, the bear says it’s because it feels like a girl, not a boy, so its name should not be Thomas, but Tilly. The boy tells his bear that it doesn’t matter if its a boy or girl, and happily introduced his new friend Tilly the Teddy to their friends.

The storyteller choked up at this point. Obviously this is a deep emotional issue for people who feel like they are in the same situation. We cannot simply dismiss their feelings, because that will only turn them off to our message while alienating the bystanders in the middle. However, neither can we simply let them indoctrinate our children with this insidious message. We can show compassion, but we nevertheless must insist upon reality: male and female are real and tangible, and all children need and deserve a father and a mother.

The LGBTQ+ movement is at the vanguard of a worldwide effort at deconstruction. Before our eyes, activists and philosophers have dismantled everything from biological sex to the very meaning of language itself.

Love has no gender. What does this mean? What does the word love mean in this context? Affection? Loyalty? Physical intimacy? What does gender mean in this context? The LGBTQ+ movement has created dozens of genders, despite there existing only two biological sexes. Male and female are written on our very chromosomes, which cannot be altered by surgery, hormones, or wishful thinking. But festival-goers would rather not talk about this, preferring instead to cover it with the veneer of inclusion and pride.

Their war is one against biology, against language, against nature, and against God. The Christian Scriptures are in agreement with both human tradition and basic biology when it comes to the concept of man and woman, and the family structure of father, mother, and children. Queer activists rebel against this, calling it an artificial binary, a restrictive box that was created by evil men to constrain the full flowering of human potential.

Nevertheless, it is ironic how the trans movement has created a box even more restrictive than anything the patriarchy ever supported. I am old enough to remember feminists agitating against gendered toys and clothing at department stores. They claimed that ads showing boys playing with trucks and girls playing with dolls was harmful because it taught children that certain activities were restricted to one sex or the other. Their message was that it was okay for boys to play with dolls or girls to play with trucks.

Today’s transgender movement explicitly rejects that idea! Parents are told that if their two-year-old boy picks up a doll, then he might be trans, and they should consider putting him in dresses, giving him puberty blockers, and preparing for surgery!

The third and final drag queen story time book, read by a drag king, was about a girl who hated wearing dresses, preferring her flannel shirt instead. Her mother begged her to wear a dress for a wedding, admitting that she was worried about what people would think if she showed up with a girl in a shirt. (One feature of these books is all knowing children pitted against ignorant parents. This is not a good message for children if you want a healthy family.) Eventually, the girl and her brother conspired to alter her flannel into a formal suit for the wedding, and everyone was happy.

The subtle message of this book is not the 1990s feminist idea that girls can wear whatever they want, but a restrictive idea that preferring flannel shirts to dresses means that a girl might really be a boy inside. It should be obvious how this can be harmful to developing children, but remember, queer activists believe that children must be exposed to these ideas at young ages so as to awaken their own potential queerness. This is textbook grooming, whether they appreciate the term or not.

I find the entire drag phenomenon tremendously ironic. Obviously some people enjoy such spectacles, and there is no accounting for taste, but it is odd how accepted drag has become in our society. Consider that blackface - white actors presenting themselves as exaggerated caricatures of blacks - has become so taboo that even finding out that someone did it as a joke many decades ago is grounds for being censured or even fired. On the other hand, drag - male actors presenting themselves as exaggerated caricatures of women - is not only tolerated, but celebrated.

I found it especially ironic this week, as the world mourned the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Here was an actual queen who was respected for her duty, honor, and quiet dignity. Compare that with drag queens who demand respect for flouncing around on stage in mockery of women. There are prominent voices such as J.K. Rowling and Abigail Schrier who worry that the modern queer movement is erasing women entirely. I suspect that history will not look kindly upon this phenomenon. Someday our society will look at drag with the same horror and disgust as blackface.

Finally, it really did seem crass to have this event on September 11th. Boise Police Chief Ryan Lee appeared onstage, between a loud dance performance and drag queen story time, to honor first responders and ask for a moment of silence. He told the crowd that “it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, who you love, or how you choose to love them, we are here for you.” I presume that we cannot expect the Boise Police Department to protect our children from the sort of grooming I have described here.

Queerness is America’s new state religion. Don’t believe me? Look at the sponsors of Boise Pride and countless other LGBTQ+ events: local, state, and federal government agencies, grocery stores, banks, alcoholic beverage distributors, multinational corporations, airlines, and even children’s applesauce companies. Several religious groups were proudly represented last Sunday - there were Mormons, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Jews, and more.

This new religion has inverted the traditional view of human nature. Christendom once considered lust, greed, wrath, sloth, envy, gluttony, and pride to be deadly sins; the new religion has made them into virtues.

I am convinced that most of the people involved do not think deeply about what pride represents - they just enjoy the bright colors, silly costumes, and the warm fuzzy feelings brought on by supporting tolerance, inclusion, diversity, and love.

But the truth is that those are only surface level feelings. The LGBTQ+ movement is leading millions of people down a path of depression, emptiness, hopelessness, and pain. We need to aggressively protect our children from this path, while at the same time engaging people with love and respect. I believe that we can have a respectful conversation, but queer advocates must know in no uncertain terms that we will protect our children from their agenda.

Above all, we need to proclaim the truth: the society we desire is one where all children grow up in healthy families with a father and a mother, and where they are shielded from those who would capture their minds in service of a sociopolitical agenda. The veneer of pride is like candy from a man in a windowless van: no matter how good it tastes, taking it is a very bad idea.