This weekend, satanists, drag queens, and anti-gun advocates will help the North Idaho Pride Alliance celebrate gay pride -- and public dollars will also help pay for it via money appropriated by state lawmakers.
The North Idaho Pride Alliance’s Pride in the Park boasts a number of sponsorships, including the ACLU of Idaho, the Satanic Temple of Idaho, and the anti-gun group, Everytown for Gun Safety.
But the event, which features the usual complement of drag queens that has become a normal theme for these kinds of affairs, also draws support from Idaho’s treasury in the form of money from the state tobacco settlement account known as the Millennium Fund. The Millennium Fund helps pay for programs such as Project Filter, an anti-smoking campaign of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare that also happens to be a sponsor of Saturday’s event.
Public records show the Department of Health and Welfare contributed $1,500 to the North Idaho Pride Alliance on April 18 via the Millennium Fund.
It’s not the first time that state government agencies have put up funds in support of gay pride programming in the state. Records show that the Department of Health and Welfare has been a steady and frequent supporter for the last couple of years. The agency pitched in $3,000 in 2021. This is a drop in the bucket compared to what the Department of Health and Welfare and other Idaho agencies have done in the name of gay pride. In fact, since 2017 the state and public health districts have put close to $117,000 into Boise gay pride programs.
The Idaho Freedom Foundation has long sounded the alarm about the way in which public dollars are being used to promote the leftist agenda. We’ve seen it on college campuses and in our K-12 public schools. We’ve also seen it in our public libraries. (As a side note, the Coeur d’Alene Public Library, a city government agency, is also listed as an event sponsor for North Idaho Pride in the Park. Additionally, the Idaho State Police is co-sponsoring the event, but there are no records of this agency expending money on the event).
It's also worth noting that this is not the first time the North Idaho Pride Alliance has turned up on our radar. From our previous research, we observed that the North Idaho Pride Alliance targets students at schools to organize LGBTQ+ clubs and provide resources on transgenderism and gender identity to minors. Many of these clubs have been formed in Idaho schools, including the Gender and Sexuality Alliance at Lake City and Post Falls high schools.
This is just the latest example of misallocation of public money. It’s one thing to watch corporate America cater to the gay agenda. It’s another thing when it’s our money, as residents of Idaho, that’s behind it. It makes all of us involuntary supporters of this event.
When lawmakers vote to fund a budget, they need to start asking where the money is really going. They’re part of the problem if they vote for it knowing that the money is being used to support this kind of debauchery. The public needs to hold politicians accountable for voting to fund these kinds of programs.
It’s time for lawmakers and Gov. Little to stop supplying leftists with public money to carry out their efforts.
