Last night at the meeting of the Eagle Library Board, trustees agreed with staff recommendations to remove the community bulletin board from the lobby. Why? An LGBTQ+ group had put up fliers at the Nampa Library and received backlash from the community in response. Sen. Brian Lenney highlighted the issue on his Twitter account, framing it as “inviting children to privately discuss their sexuality with adults.”
Eagle Library staff did not want any backlash, so the director suggested simply removing the bulletin board altogether rather than making judgment calls. I voted along with the two other trustees to do so, with the caveat that we might consider bringing it back with a more narrowly tailored policy in the future.
This morning, Rep. Ted Hill presented House Bill 10 in the House Education Committee. This bill would instruct public schools to only display the American flag, state flags, military flags, tribal flags, international flags, or school and athletic flags. The unstated purpose, as recognized by supporters and opponents alike, was to crack down on schoolteachers decorating their classrooms with homosexual and transgender pride flags.
The Twitter account Libs of TikTok picked up the story yesterday, sharing it with more than 400,000 viewers as of this writing. The account followed up with a clip of Rep. Hill’s presentation.
Check out my discussion with Matt Edwards on Idaho Signal today, including Rep. Hill’s closing remarks and debate from several other legislators:
A few people testified against the bill, including a Boise public school teacher and Democratic party officer named Cassandra Horner who said this legislation would harm inclusion, and that the pride flag is about identity not politics.
Hence the debate that weaves through both these issues: Is LGBTQ+ pride inherently sexual?
Supporters of such say no, it’s about who you really are inside, and hanging pride flags in a schoolroom or inviting teenagers to a club led by homosexual or transgender adults are perfectly acceptable, even innocent, and it’s the critics who are sexualizing such things.
This is one of those issues in which I have a difficult time presenting the best opposing argument, because it seems cut and dried to me. Each of the letters in “LGBTQ+” represent something inherently sexual — either a rejection of one’s own biological sex, or the idea that one’s sexual attraction differs from the vast majority of people. One testifier today, Daniel Murphy, pointed out that schools don’t hang “heterosexual pride flags” either, and he would oppose them if they did. Consider that if someone wanted to post a flier in the library advertising a club where teenage girls come talk about sex with adult men, he would be lucky to get out of the building alive. Yet post the same thing under the rainbow flag and it’s not only considered acceptable, but laudable.
This is a symptom of a sick society, an upside-down society in which the inmates are literally running the asylum.
I chose a deliberately provocative image for this article. Yet as Rep. Hill pointed out, pride flags represent a very small number of people compared to the American flag which represents us all. Courts have held that burning Old Glory is protected speech, yet many people react to the burning of a pride flag as if something holy was being desecrated. Why is that?
Earlier this month, Rep. Lucas Cayler presented a resolution to the Idaho Republican Party affirming that pride events are inherently sexual in nature. The party approved the resolution and you can read the entire thing here:
For too long, Christians and conservatives have given ground on this issue, to the point where kindergartners are being taught about homosexuality and transgenderism. This is literal grooming, taking innocent and impressionable young children and molding them into something twisted and perverted. It’s time to reclaim the public square in the name of decency and the traditional values that once made our people great.
Keeping pride flags out of public school classrooms and fliers inviting teens to talk privately with homosexual adults off of library bulletin boards is the least we can do.
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About Brian Almon
Brian Almon is the Editor of the Gem State Chronicle. He also serves as Chairman of the District 14 Republican Party and is a trustee of the Eagle Public Library Board. He lives with his wife and five children in Eagle.
