The forces of hate will be at Pride in Nampa. So should people with basic decency | Opinion

If you are a person who cares about freedom and justice, it’s worth making an effort to show support for the Canyon County Pride Festival today. The forces of hate in Idaho have made it clear they intend to be there, so people with a little common decency should be there, too.

Efforts have been made to pressure the city of Nampa to illegally cancel the event.

Thankfully, Nampa Mayor Debbie Kling made it clear that the city intends to abide by the Constitution and not engage in discrimination (though her response fell far short of the rebuke of discrimination she should have issued).

And this is part of a trend that extends far beyond Canyon County. Efforts have long been underway to make such celebrations de-facto illegal in flagrant violation of the First Amendment using lies and deception — especially the lie that the LGBTQ+ community is victimizing children. That lie alone has been the central obsession of the Idaho Legislature for the last several years.

One example was the 2022 drag ban bill, which easily passed the Idaho House but was never taken up by the Senate (don’t count on that happening again after the 2024 GOP primary).

Proponents of the bill made a case that seems compelling on its face: Why should minors be subjected to sexually explicit performances in public?

And the answer, which no one disagrees with, is that minors should not be subjected to sexually explicit performances. It’s illegal. It has always been illegal. If there’s a sexually explicit performance in front of a minor, call the police, and people will be arrested, tried and sent to prison for up to a decade.

But many lawmakers were happy to pretend this law didn’t exist, to pretend that there was a crisis that needed to be solved.

“Really, this is simply a protect the children from perverts bill,” Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, said about his bill, according to the Idaho Capital Sun.

Proponents of the drag ban had a case-in-point: A drag performer in Coeur d’Alene had exposed himself to children during a Pride event, they said.

The claim caused an internet firestorm, and the performer was inundated with death threats — an outcome so easy to predict it’s hard to imagine it wasn’t intended.

And now there’s no doubt it was a lie — a $1.1 million lie, to be precise. A jury, having reviewed all the evidence, found last month that the blogger had either simply lied or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

An entire legislative firestorm over a lie because so many lawmakers couldn’t be bothered to learn — or care about — the truth.

The lie had a strategic purpose: It provided justification to pass a bill purporting to simply ban sexual performances in front of children. But the bill used strategic ambiguity — coupling severe consequences with vagueness.

The draft of the bill was so vague that it was entirely unclear what sort of conduct would be legal in public. It didn’t, for example, require that nudity or simulated sexual acts be part of the performance — as current law requires. The only way to be sure you’d be safe would be to refrain from any sort of public performance.

What would have happened to pride celebrations if this bill had been enacted? Take a look at libraries.

Some rural libraries are closing to kids or to the public entirely in a scramble to comply with the intentionally vague and punitive rules passed by lawmakers this session. Strategic ambiguity is working, not to actually make books illegal, which courts would toss out right away, but to make libraries so afraid that minors are losing access to books nonetheless.

LGBTQ+ people in Idaho already face severe legal discrimination, and it will only get worse without resistance.

The government has taken away the basic right to make personal health care decisions away from transgender children and their parents It made it much harder for many kids to have access to books that include gay characters — or any books, for that matter. It tried to limit transgender athletes’ participation in sports, and to block transgender people from getting official documents listing their gender. All this in just the last few years.

Lawmakers refuse to do anything about the bigoted clause in the Idaho Constitution denying the validity of gay marriage. They continue to allow landlords to refuse to rent to gay people, and allow employers to fire people simply because of who they love.

These are all attacks on basic freedom. Sunday provides an opportunity to take a stand against them, one of many stands decent people will have to take to restore freedom for the LGBTQ+ community — and for all of us — in Idaho.