Born to be Brave

Idaho banned Pride flags. Boise’s mayor wrapped the flagpoles in rainbow instead.

Idaho Governor Brad Little signed HB 561 into law last week, prohibiting government buildings from flying non-official flags, with fines of $2,000 a day for non-compliance. Boise had been flying a Pride flag for over a decade.

Within a week, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean had the city’s flagpoles wrapped in Pride colours. The rainbow wrapping sits on the pole itself, not as a flag. The city is also displaying a large “Creating a city for everyone” sign on City Hall and rainbow lighting around the building at night.

The city’s response was precise: “The city of Boise remains in compliance with the law and is not flying any city official Pride flags on our properties.”

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Ted Hill, has openly stated his bill was specifically designed to target Boise for flying the Pride flag. The mayor’s response: comply with the letter of the law, and ignore its spirit entirely.

I went to “the club” for the first time recently—the gay kind, in the gayborhood, because I have no business going to “the club” anywhere else. Coincidentally, this was a few days before they painted the crosswalk over. I remember staring down, sad, thinking, “damn, they’ll be painting that over soon.” Sure enough, it was gone before the end of the weekend.

A week or so later, I happened to drive down that street while eking out my sad little delivery driver shift. I looked at the crosswalk. As much as someone got themselves arrested trying to fix it (based, btw), the rainbow was gone. Alas.

Then I looked up.

Every building on the street was decked out like a pride parade had fucking exploded. A lot of the people were decked out as well. It was even gayer than it had been before. I looked into the window of one of the bars and their TV was playing a series of graphics that basically said “they took our fucking crosswalk away, the bastards,” in a sea of what I can only imagine was every fucking rainbow flag they could find. I almost cried laughing.

While four leatherback sea turtle nests might not sound like a lot, it's the same number in a single year as were found in total during the ten year span between 2015-2025. The Cape Hatteras National Seashore is also on the north edge of the species' range, so leatherback sea turtle nests are already not very common in the area.

You’re allowed to care even though lots of things are going bad. Some things can’t be fixed or saved. But it’s okay to hold onto hope for something good to happen tomorrow. Good things are always going to pop up like flowers in war zones.

“The world is not on fire, there are just lots of fires.” Don’t lose hope that some fires can be put out. So much is still easy. Build a safe zone within the flames, and persist putting them out. Accepting we are in a bad place does not equal rolling over to let it get worse. No matter how bad things will get, you can still put out flames in different spaces.

You can give yourself the freedom of acknowledging life right now is in a state of unrest and we don’t know when the chapter will close, while also being happy we are here with other people and things that make it worth it. Because it is worth it. All hard things are worth it.