With Patriot Front arrest, anti-LGBTQ movement comes out of the shadows of a U-Haul truck
The arrest last weekend of 31 Patriot Front members on suspicion of conspiring to riot at a gay pride picnic in a Coeur d’Alene park was the latest in a string of recent anti-LGBTQ incidents in June, Gay Pride Month.
Weeks earlier, Idaho Rep. Heather Scott invited members of Panhandle Patriots to the stage at a political gathering to promote a “Gun d’Alene” event scheduled to coincide with the same Pride in the Park event in Coeur d’Alene.
“We intend to go head-to-head with these people,” an unidentified Panhandle Patriot member said to Scott’s gathering. “A line must be drawn in the sand.”
Boise pastor Joe Jones of Shield of Faith Baptist Church was recorded giving a sermon saying God wants to “put all queers to death. ...These people know that they’re worthy of death.”
Gay pride flags were stolen from Harrison Boulevard in Boise, the second year that’s happened.
Anti-gay and anti-transgender sentiment seems to be on the rise.
And it’s not just aggression from groups like Patriot Front. Unfortunately, anti-gay and anti-transgender sentiments are making their way out of the shadows of the back of a U-Haul truck and into state legislatures.
Florida’s legislature passed its “don’t say gay” bill, banning public school teachers from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity.
Idaho’s legislature has been on a tear, becoming one of the first states in 2020 to pass a law banning transgender girls and women from competing in girls and women’s sports, a bill now replicated in other states.
This year, the Idaho Legislature failed to ban the practice of youth conversion therapy, a practice that tries to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The House this year did pass a bill that would have prohibited doctors from providing gender-affirming medical care for youths. The House also passed a bill that would have criminalized librarians for “objectionable” material, which ostensibly targets books that include LGBTQ content.
Idaho’s Republican legislators have sought to defund Idaho Public Television, with one legislator citing a lesbian couple on the kids show “Clifford the Big Red Dog.”
The exposure of Patriot Front’s failed plot last weekend is a good thing. This group has operated in the shadows, and most people across the country have never heard of them. Bringing them out into the light exposes their dangerous, white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ beliefs. It also perhaps explains the thinking that’s behind some of the more mainstream efforts to attack gay and transgender rights.
As Kate Bitz, program manager with the Western States Center, told Idaho Statesman reporter Sally Krutzig, the Patriot Front’s philosophy is tied up with replacement theory propaganda, and that includes homosexuality.
“They of course have a history of anti-LGBTQ-plus rhetoric,” Bitz said in a phone interview with Krutzig. “So one of their slogans using propaganda imagery is, ‘Strong families make strong nations,’ with this idea that a strong family is a white cisgender heterosexual nuclear family.”
Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau, who was among those arrested in Coeur d’Alene, has been quoted as saying, “A nation within a nation is our goal. Our people face complete annihilation as our culture and heritage are attacked from all sides.”
“So from this, we can kind of extrapolate that they would view very family-friendly and very joyful events like Pride in the Park in Coeur d’Alene, as some kind of a direct threat to them,” Bitz said. “Other people can’t just live our lives in the way that we prefer without them perceiving it as some kind of a problem for them.”
You see that play out in the rhetoric that they use, claiming that such events are “child grooming” or trying to recruit kids.
“They’re coming for our kids,” the Panhandle Patriots member said at Heather Scott’s rally.
We saw that attitude of fear and threat in the debate over gay marriage. Opponents said we needed to protect the sanctity of marriage, and that if we allowed gay marriage, it would destroy the institution of marriage.
Well, here we are seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage bans were unconstitutional, the institution of marriage is still intact. Nothing got destroyed, heterosexual marriage is still going strong.
As our editorial board wrote earlier, the Patriot Front’s planned disruption of the gay pride picnic in Coeur d’Alene perfectly demonstrates why we still need gay pride events.
Targeting, threatening and harassing a group of people just because of who they are is about as un-American and anti-freedom as you can get.
And there’s nothing patriotic about that.
This story was originally published June 15, 2022 at 1:56 PM.
