BOISE, Idaho — A minor confrontation broke out at the controversial “Hetero Awesome Fest” on Saturday when a protester took the stage and began singing a pro-LGBTQ+ song before being removed.
According to several livestreams of the event, including those from Old Street Saloon, the incident occurred during the two-day festival held on June 20-21 in Cecil D. Andrus Park, directly across from the Idaho State Capitol. Mark Fitzpatrick, owner of the Old State Saloon and organizer of the event, rushed the stage and took the microphone from the man after about a minute of singing.
I feel like this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but… really, I don’t see a problem with these people having this event, and I think the person who got up to sing the pro-LGBTQ+ song was in the wrong here. But let me explain before you crucify me.
It’s pride month, and they have anti-LGBTQ+ views. Holding their own event for people with similar views is by far preferable to going and causing problems at pride events, and while I don’t agree with their views, I support their freedom to hold them, given they aren’t causing problems for others, which it sounds like they weren’t.
An LGBTQ+ person “crashing” their event isn’t really any different from an anti-LGBTQ+ person crashing a pride event, which I’d obviously have a problem with, so I think it’d be somewhat hypocritical to applaud someone for doing it to these people, however much I disagree with their viewpoint.
Edit: Yep, knew it’d be unpopular. Rather than just downvoting me, though, why not tell me why you disagree?
Because I don’t even know where to start. The biggest part, I suppose, is that if you give them a space like this, it normalizes the movement. People stop feeling like there is something wrong with disliking the LGBT community, the movement grows as it is no longer stigmatized, and LGBT rights backslide.
Furthermore, holding a “hetero pride” festival during pride month is inherently bigoted as well. Pride month exists because straight people wouldn’t let gay people express themselves otherwise. Your idea isn’t totally unlike the idea of letting klansmen openly hold festivals during Black History month so they stop harassing black people.
But it’s pride month, we can let bigots be bigots for a moment. We’re already fighting them the rest of the year.
I’m against giving hatred and bigotry a platform. It’s like saying “let the Nazis have their event, I support their freedom to gather, as long as they’re not causing problems for others.”
Them gathering is causing problems. We’re on the forefront of changing centuries of human rights violations, and tolerating other people’s intolerance will only get in the way of real change.
To start with your first sentence is stupid and it goes downhill from there. Pride moth exists as a response to being silenced and prosecuted for centuries. Straight people don’t need an event to show they deserve to exist because they already run the show and having an event to celebrate as a counter to pride month is just rubbing in historical oppression. Crashing each other’s events is nowhere near the same thing due to context.
A hetero celebration event during pride month is like having a confederate celebration on Juneteenth.
That is why you are being downvoted, and nobody else explained because odds are you won’t understand and just dig your heels in deeper.
PRIDE MOTH YOU SAY
Tis the good stuff
I think my viewpoint is akin to the Nazi bar analogy. I don’t want to drink at a Nazi bar, but I’m glad the Nazi bar exists, because it gives the Nazis somewhere to go that’s isolated and away from everyone else. I’d rather these people hold their own event and congregate there than go protest at a pride parade or whatever else they might be doing, and I don’t think ‘kicking the hornet’s nest’ by trying to disrupt them is really helping anyone. Case in point, I’d never heard about them before, and wouldn’t have if this article hadn’t been written, which it wouldn’t have been if nobody had crashed the event.
WTF, the Nazi bar analogy wasn’t supposed to be in support of the creation of Nazi bars. Are you okay? Did you recently hit your head? What the fuck have you been smoking?
You never EVER give hateful ideologies room to breathe and organize. It spreads like a virus if you don’t kill it on the spot.
What a terrible opinion to have.
I mean, they are calling it a “Hetero Awesome” event. Which is fine, as straight people are awesome! But so are the gays.
If these folks are so triggered by someone singing a pro-LGBTQ+ song, though, it makes me think it was never about how awesome anyone is in the first place. It seems more to be about “Gays are not awesome like we are” than “We’re awesome”. See how the message is different?
I bet if a Straight Ally showed up at a Pride event singing a song about how awesome Straight People are, nobody would have a problem with that, as long as it wasn’t trying to dunk on some other group in the process.
(Now, that is leading me to wonder what the most “Hetero Awesome” song might be. What song would you pick as the Straight People Anthem?)
Wonderwall. It’s Wonderwall.
After all
I think they should be allowed to have this festival and also I think I should be allowed to crash it and fuck a load into the cheating closeted husbands
“Not gay, just SSA.” Go to Salt Lake. You’ll find plenty of them.
Yep. You’re meant to incarcerate or banish people you don’t like. Going to where they congregate to attack or shame them is a very unwise move. Let them have their little groups, away from normal people
If they are congregating to promote hate and bigotry then going to attack and shame them is a wise move, even if they try to pretend their congregation is for something positive. An easy we to tell is that it is pretending to be positive is if the ‘celebration’ is a reaction to a group that has been discriminated against trying to celebrate who they are.