An Idaho bar has drawn national attention for celebrating “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” in response to LGBTQ Pride month, which has been celebrated during June for decades.
The Old State Saloon in Eagle, a suburb of Boise, announced its “inaugural Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” on social media last month.
“Each Monday will be Hetero Male Monday and any heterosexual male dressed like a heterosexual male will receive a free draft beer,” the bar said in a Facebook post that has since gone viral. “Each Wednesday is Heterosexual couples day and each heterosexual couple will receive 15% off their bill.”
Bar owner Mark Fitzpatrick said he came up with the idea as June was approaching because he knew “all this stuff was coming,” according to KTVB, an NBC affiliate in Boise.
“But with my beliefs, I love people, but as far as being a biblical Christian, to celebrate it, I can’t do that,” Fitzpatric told KTVB. “And the last several years, it’s just been getting so extreme. So we created Heterosexual Awesomeness Month.”
Regarding what was “getting so extreme,” Fitzpatrick said, “the imagery that you see all month with parades and getting to the point of nakedness and things with people walking down the street, I can’t get behind that.”
He added that he hasn’t been to Boise during its Pride festival.
“I’m always going to side with what God says,” Fitzpatrick told KTVB. “If the Bible says that it’s a sin to act out in homosexuality, then I’m going to agree with what the Bible says. That doesn’t mean I don’t love homosexuals, and that doesn’t mean I don’t love people. But just because you love somebody, doesn’t mean you’re going to jump behind them and support them in every single decision they make in life. It’s not a requirement.”
Fitzpatrick said his “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” involves “no hate at all, it’s a love thing.”
He said he’s received national support, and the bar posted on its Facebook page Thursday that it had sold out of food. The bar is also selling “Heterosexual Awesomeness Merch” on its website, including a black-and-white American flag T-shirt with the male and female gender symbols on it and a T-shirt with a beer glass on it that says “Beers for Breeders” and “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month.”
On Thursday night, the bar’s Facebook page also shared an image of a child vomiting rainbow with the caption “Protect the children,” invoking a decades-old false moral panic that LGBTQ people are dangerous to children — rhetoric increasingly weaponized by the right in recent years.
The bar wrote in response to the image, “This wouldn’t be posted if things hadn’t gone way too far!”
Fitzpatrick told KTVB that he’s received criticism online, including a number of comments stating that his monthlong heterosexuality celebration is homophobic.
“There are people commenting online, ‘This is a publicity stunt,’” he said. “I’m a business owner; I want people to come in here, but I also truly love it when people come in here and engage in conversation with each other, learn something about each other. And they get to talk like this to each other, and at the end of it, they realize we’re probably not as far apart as we think we are.”
The bar’s celebration is among a number of incidents within the first week of Pride month that appear to mark a rising amount of backlash compared to past years.
During the first weekend of Pride month, 14 Pride banners were slashed in Poulsbo, Washington, and 200 Pride flags were stolen from the town center in Carlisle, Massachusetts. The sidewalk outside of an LGBTQ-inclusive Methodist church in Mitchell, South Dakota, was vandalized with graffiti of a Bible verse condemning homosexuality and the word “ABOMINATION” in bright red spray paint.
Last month, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and State Department all warned that terrorists could target events during Pride Month. Fitzpatrick did not immediately return a request for comment regarding the increasingly hostile climate for LGBTQ people.
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