A bar owner near Boise, Idaho, plans to celebrate heterosexuality in the middle of Pride Month. Mark Fitzpatrick, owner of Old State Saloon, says his Pride Month-inspired two-day festival on June 20 and 21, dubbed “Hetero Awesome Fest,” will be held at a local park across the street from the state capitol as first reported by NBC News on Tuesday, April 29.
Fitzpatrick says his festival is meant to give people an alternative to Pride Month celebrations.
The event even has its own Instagram page, with a narrator declaring, “Heterosexual Awesomeness Festival is coming to Boise. This isn’t just another festival. It’s a movement, a celebration of faith, family and freedom. Right in the heart of Idaho.”
Building on past efforts
The new festival follows Fitzpatrick’s “Heterosexual Awareness Month” last year. Fitzpatrick told NBC News that his aim is not for hate, and said in a recent video he doesn’t intend “to be negative.” Fitzpatrick said the event is also not meant to “target any group,” but rather to “celebrate what God’s design was,” and to point out “practices we find troubling, such as the encouragement of ‘gender transitions’ among children or their exposure to inappropriate content.”
Critics respond
Critics note that, while his intention may not be hate, his bar’s social media page says “There’s no shame in speaking the truth. The LGBTQ agenda is wicked, perverse, and victimizes children.” However, he has supporters, with one Instagram user commenting, “You’re speaking 100% truth and we need more people and business owners like yourself.!! God bless you,” a sentiment shared by some other commenters as well.
Inspiration from Pride Month
Fitzpatrick says he decided to create Hetero Awesome Fest after he was unable to take his daughter into downtown Boise last year, as that was where Pride events were taking place.
Fitzpatrick said, “I was thinking to myself, ‘What could we do to celebrate in June that would be different than what’s going on downtown? Can we be different than what Pride has been celebrating every June? What if we celebrated God’s design for sexuality? What would that look like?’ And within a few seconds, I thought, ‘Man, heterosexuality is awesome.’”
The Hill reports that Pride Month organizers in Idaho’s capital city have not held events in June since 2020. Organizers decided to move the events to September due to the COVID-19 pandemic and because weather is more favorable during that month.
Boise Pride’s response?
When asked about Hetero Awesome Fest, Boise Pride said it told NBC News it had no official statement regarding this year’s event but told the organizers “best of luck with their new festival.”
Similarly, “Straight Pride” organizers have held events in Boston and California going back to 2019.
More recently, Pride events have faced additional backlash, as some sponsors have moved away from support amid the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle DEI initiatives.
