Pro-LGBTQ Musician Infiltrates Idaho's 'Hetero Awesome Fest' Straight Pride Celebration
When a homophobic "festival" can't even draw a crowd in Idaho? Something's shifted…
GaudiLab | Shutterstock It's Pride Month, which of course means it's time for Conservatives across America to throw tantrums over the existence of LGBTQ+ people. As such, an Idaho bar's right-wing owner decided to host a "straight pride" festival in Boise. To say it did not go according to plan would be an understatement.
A pro-LGBTQ musician infiltrated the 'Hetero Awesome Fest' and was kicked offstage.
The "Hetero Awesome Fest" was a so-called "straight pride" event organized by Idaho resident Mark Fitzgerald, owner of Old State Saloon in nearby Eagle. The awkwardly titled festival (Mr. Fitzgerald, if you're reading this: PLEASE hire a copywriter and find a better name for next year) was held in front of the Idaho state capitol in Boise on June 21 and 22, 2025.
Social media backlash to the event when it was first announced a few months ago was swift and often hilarious, with people mocking the event as sounding… well, pretty gay for starters. It's like what a deeply closeted gay man would name a straight-pride festival in a satirical sketch on 'SNL.' Or as one TikTok user put it, "'Hetero awesome fest' sounds like a 'South Park' parody. I'm losing it."
So it was fitting, then, that a local musician and self-identified former Army Ranger named Daniel Hamrick, known around Boise by his stage name Archer Flynn, decided to infiltrate the festival to sing a pro-LGBTQ song called "Boy," about a trans man whom everyone tries to force to dress and behave as a girl.
The lyrics to the song aren't exactly subtle, but they're not explicit either, which is probably why the "Hetero Awesome Fest" let Archer get nearly the entire way through his song before they realized what was happening and abruptly cut his mic and the live stream of the performance being shown online. A physical scuffle then ensued, according to media reports.
Of course, just like Fitzgerald's previous posts about his "fest," the mockery came in hot and heavy, with much of it focusing on the most glaring detail of "Hetero Awesome Fest": Much like a certain recent military parade, virtually no one showed up.
'Hetero Awesome Fest' drew only dozens of attendees.
Fitzgerald has made a name for himself on social media in recent years as an outspoken homophobe and MAGA devotee, advertising a whole slate of events at his bar dedicated to far-right conspiracy theories like "Flat Earth." He also declared Pride Month 2024 "Heterosexual Awesomeness Month," complete with a promotion that offered free beer to straight people in 2024.
The "Hetero Awesome Fest" seems to have been Fitzgerald's idea of an escalation. And it's a fitting one, given how much backlash there has been to Pride Month from conservatives in recent years, starting in 2023 with a viral campaign against retailer Target, which used to be famous for its yearly line of Pride merchandise.
This year, that merchandise has all but vanished, as has the once-yearly tradition of corporations rainbow-fying their logos. The vibe shift is palpable, especially to LGBTQ+ people. So by all accounts, Fitzgerald's "Hetero Awesome Fest" should have been a massive success teeming with jubilant homophobes. But it wasn't
In fact, it wasn't even close. Local news outlet KTVB couldn't help but snark with a headline reading "Dozens attend 'Hetero Awesome Fest' in Idaho," and reported that the fest "drew roughly 30 to 50 people at any given time on both Friday and Saturday." Clips and photos from the event show sparse crowds, if you can even call them that.
This includes media posted by the "fest" itself. In one video posted to X, filmed from the back of the stage and facing out into the crowd, there appear to be no more than a dozen spectators watching the festivities.
Fitzgerald has blamed his event's colossal face-plant on his fellow conservative Christians, complaining in a post on X that "our main problem is not morally bankrupt Pride degenerates, it’s the weak and apathetic conservative Christians who fold under the slightest amount of pressure." Perhaps. But given recent events, it's more likely there's far more at play.
If homophobes can't even draw a crowd in deep-red Idaho, that should tell us all something.
You certainly wouldn't get this impression from watching the breathless news reports or the incessant, panic-driven doom and gloom on social media. However, if you step beyond them, it becomes apparent that Americans' feelings about political issues seem to have shifted in recent weeks, and the shift is drastic.
The President's approval rating has taken repeated nosedives, as has his polling on key issues, including the one issue he was still polling well on: immigration. Amid the uproar over ICE raids in Los Angeles and other cities, he's now underwater on that, too.
Then, there was the undeniably huge turnout of the No King's Day protests. Tallying crowds is notoriously difficult to do accurately, but estimates range from a conservative 4 to 6 million to a bullish 10 to 11 million. Either way, they likely exceeded the record turnout for the 2017 Women's March that shocked everyone when it drew an estimated 3.3 to 5.6 million.
But it's hard to believe that low-end estimate. Thousands gathered for No King's Day in even remote rural areas throughout the country, where Trump scored well all three times he ran. Huge crowds turned out in deep-red places like Oklahoma and, yes, even in Idaho, all feats the Women's March could not achieve. Trump won Oklahoma and Idaho by 35 points and 36 points, respectively.
Compare that, of course, to the attendance at the U.S. Army's 250th Anniversary parade, which the President claimed was a military parade to celebrate his 79th birthday. Organizers planned for 200,000 attendees, but police say only about 10,000 actually showed up. And in video clips, the silence in the crowd is deafening, so much so that a video of the squealing tires of a tank has now become the signature moment burned into everyone's memory.
Now, we have another data point to add to the mix: the colossal failure of the 'Hetero Awesome Fest.' If there was anywhere in America where a "straight pride" fest designed to ridicule and dehumanize LGBTQ+ people should have been a rousing success, it's Idaho. And yet, it was unable to draw more than "30 to 50 people at any given time" despite a months-long social media promotional campaign that drew international media attention.
What gives? I'm no expert, but given the constant flow of Trump voters turning on the President who they say duped them, the simplest explanation is glaringly clear: People have had it — with the President himself, with unconstitutional immigration raids, with broken economic promises, with scapegoating LGBTQ+ people simply trying to live their lives. They've had enough.
Christopher Penler | Shutterstock
That doesn't mean our contentious era is over, of course. But even some of the most diehard MAGA public figures in the country, like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have gone on the record in media appearances in the last week, angrily turning on the President. Whether or not that dissent is sincere (my guess is that it's not) doesn't matter. What does matter is that they clearly smell blood in the water and are strategically aligning themselves accordingly.
What comes next is anyone's guess. But from Congress to the Administration and its allies, there are maybe 1,000 people running this country, and 340 million of us living in it. And an awful lot of that 340 million seems to have changed their minds about that 1,000 of late. I'd rather be one of us than one of them right about now.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
