(FāVS News) — On a June weekend in Boise, Idaho, two competing visions of family and religion will play out just miles apart, reflecting a deepening cultural divide in the Gem State.
Mark Fitzpatrick, owner of Old State Saloon in nearby Eagle, will host his second annual “Hetero Awesome Fest” — a two-day event June 20-21 at Cecil D. Andrus Park, across from the state Capitol in Boise, featuring food, art, live music and speeches celebrating what he called “God’s design for sexuality.”
Across town, Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise will hold its own gathering, “All Kinds of Awesome,” welcoming LGBTQ individuals and families on June 21 — a counter to Fitzpatrick’s message, also celebrated during Pride Month.
The dueling events come as Idaho this year became the first state to designate “Traditional Family Values Month,” running from Mother’s Day through Father’s Day. The resolution passed as part of a broader legislative push that has included several measures targeting LGBTQ rights, including a House resolution calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
Mark Fitzpatrick, owner of Old State Saloon. (Photo courtesy of Old State Saloon)
For Fitzpatrick, a nondenominational Christian and father of six, his festival represents more than a business venture. It’s a mission he’s expanding through his new nonprofit, Hetero Awesomeness Inc., designed to “defend and protect traditional family values” and “relentlessly pursue and expose those who are the enemies thereof,” he said.
“My No. 1 target would be people who are the busy, conservative Christian type of person who is not aware of the depths of evil that’s happening from the Pride LGBTQ community,” Fitzpatrick said.
He said society has gone too far in accepting what he called the “wickedness” of LGBTQ lifestyles, particularly transgender people.
“They guilted us into ‘loving and accepting them’ to the point that we have half-naked men reading books to children in libraries,” Fitzpatrick said. “We now need to step up and push back.”
He said he is particularly concerned about children with autism, troubled home lives or social difficulties being encouraged to question their gender identity.
“Then they wind up going down a path and being labeled as something that they aren’t, only to find out later that that’s not truly how God made them to be,” he said. “And that is the point where things get depressing and why there’s such a high rate of depression, and then more prescriptions come in and more problems with Big Pharma.”
Fitzpatrick said he created the original “Heterosexual Awesomeness Fest” because his family didn’t want to go downtown during Boise’s Pride events. It started as a last-minute event at his saloon last June.
“I thought, what if at the saloon we celebrated the opposite — God’s design for sexuality, which is heterosexuality,” he said, referring to how he came up with the name. “I thought, it’s a pretty awesome gift from God.”
Fitzpatrick said he received hate mail and threatening phone calls in response to the event, but also lots of support. People moved vacations to visit his saloon, and some flew in from as far as Texas for the event.
This year’s festival is also expected to attract attendees from near and far, he said. Dave Reilly, host of “The Backlash” podcast, will drive seven hours from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with his family to attend, he said.
“I would hope that this sparks something nationwide, that it shows people that you can be proud of having a normal life, that you can be proud of your children,” said Reilly, a father of three who is sponsoring a booth at the event.
Reilly said he sees Idaho as pioneering a national movement. Beyond the state’s Traditional Family Values Month designation, Coeur d’Alene’s mayor signed a similar proclamation. The state resolution celebrates “the transformative power and beauty of God’s design for the family,” he said.
Despite potential safety issues with hosting a controversial event near the Capitol, Fitzpatrick said he’s confident in the security arrangements. Boise Police and Idaho State Police will provide official security, while two private security companies will handle minor incidents and personal protection.
“I don’t think that anything will happen because (of) the high percentage of men who will do something. They will take charge and protect people and stand for what’s right and true, and we will not be run over,” Fitzpatrick said. ” … We’re a Second Amendment state, so anybody who’s not disqualified can carry a gun openly or concealed, and that to me provides a lot of safety.”
Cityscape of Boise, Idaho. (Image by Pinpals/Pixabay/Creative Commons)
The Rev. TJ Remaley of Southminster Presbyterian Church offered a sharply different theological perspective and plans to do so through his church’s event that same weekend.
“No one is trying to take away their straightness, and they, too, are beloved creations of God,” Remaley said, referring to the Hetero Awesome Fest organizers. “Heterosexuality is not under attack. But when an event is organized in such a way that it opposes someone else’s dignity, it stops being about celebration and starts being about exclusion.”
Southminster has been “committed to the full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people in the life of the church for many years,” Remaley said. The congregation has marched in Boise Pride parades, maintained booths at Pride events and prayed on the Capitol steps during legislative sessions when anti-LGBTQ bills were under consideration.
Remaley said he wasn’t surprised by Idaho’s Traditional Family Values Month designation, though it was disappointing.
“It offers such a narrow, sanitized definition of family,” he said. “Families come in all shapes and sizes, and that includes single parents, adoptive and foster families, chosen families, multigenerational households and, yes, queer families. There is nothing untraditional about loving, committed relationships that nurture and support one another.”
In a previous interview, Rabbi Dan Fink, who recently retired from Congregation Ahavath Beth Israel in Boise, echoed similar concerns about the state resolution, describing it as “imposing a model of family that’s really rooted in bigotry and does not apply to a large majority of families in the state.”
For LGBTQ individuals feeling targeted by recent legislation and cultural pushback, Remaley had a message.
“You are not wicked,” he said. “You are not broken. You are not alone. You’re beloved, fully and fiercely, just as you are.”
This story was written in partnership with FāVS News, a nonprofit newsroom covering faith and values in the Inland Northwest.
