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.
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.”
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.
Fitzpatrick told KTVB that he’s received criticism online, including a number of comments stating that his monthlong heterosexuality celebration is homophobic.
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.
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.
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