Last year, organizers of the Boise Pride Festival scheduled a kids' drag event in a public park. But when sponsors received 28,000 comments from residents, the event was cancelled.
Blaine Conzatti of the Idaho Family Policy Center says one might think festival officials had learned a lesson, "but unfortunately … they did not."
"This year, the Boise Pride Festival, which is the largest pride festival in the state of Idaho, will feature performances from sex workers and burlesque groups on the main stage in front of kids alongside snow cone stands and bounce houses for children and face painting activities targeted at kids," Conzatti details.
He laments the lack of consideration for the negative mental impact such predatory events have on children.
"Boise Pride Festival, like many radical LGBT groups across the country, are set on sexualizing children, desecrating the public square, and making sex work seem like it's fun and cool and hip," he says.
Pointing out that Boise Pride cannot exist without the funding it receives through corporate sponsorships, Idaho Family Policy Center is asking Idahoans to take action by telling corporate executives they will not support businesses and organizations that sponsor any event exploiting impressionable children.
Target, Planned Parenthood, Walmart, and a local Methodist church are among them.
The festival is scheduled to begin tomorrow, September 8th.
