He wanted to throw an Idaho town’s first Pride. Angry residents had other ideas

NAMPA, Idaho - In the beginning, Tom Wheeler didn’t expect he would need a fence. He wanted to give Canyon County, Idaho, its first Pride celebration, and when he imagined that day, he pictured a park without barriers, an open space where everyone was welcome.

But then the mayor said the event conflicted with her beliefs, and angry residents called for a protest. Wheeler was a real estate agent from Boise, an out-of-towner, and worse, gay.

Far-right extremists had already targeted another small-town Idaho Pride, and now, Wheeler’s event seemed to be at risk, too. His mother begged him to stay home. An uncle urged him to wear a bulletproof vest. At the very least, local officers said, he might want a barricade.

Now, the crews were here with 700 feet of six-foot-tall metal fencing, and Wheeler, a 27-year-old who’d chosen not a bulletproof vest but a cowboy hat and a pink T-shirt for the day’s attire, watched as they hoisted the frame, then wrapped the metal in a black shroud.

Wheeler frowned. He felt safer, but not exactly fabulous.

“I think we have a thousand feet of gay stuff to put on the fencing,” he told Van Knapp, a curly-haired queer Nampa mom who’d helped him plan the event. “We need to glam up the perimeter.”

Until now, Wheeler’s existence had been mostly a privileged one. He was White, cisgender, handsome in a way people often commented on. When he told his family members he was gay, they hugged him and asked what had taken him so long. He’d attended his first Pride the year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, and it had felt like a huge celebratory party. He loved the go-go dancers and the drag queens, the music, the boys.

He’d come of age in the golden era of gay rights, but now all the promise he’d grown up with seemed to be at risk. Nationwide, states had introduced nearly 1,800 anti-LGBTQ+ bills over the past four years, and Idaho had led the way. In 2020, it passed the country’s first trans sports ban, and this year, its legislature introduced 13 anti-LGBTQ+ bills, more than nearly any other state. In April, it became the first to win the right from the Supreme Court to enforce a ban on gender transition care for minors.

All the while, Pride events had become increasingly dangerous. Shoppers had destroyed rainbow-colored merchandise at Targets. Armed militias had shown up at libraries where drag queens held story hours, and someone even firebombed a doughnut shop after two queens dressed as ’50s housewives sold treats there.

Wheeler exhaled, grabbed a giant Pride flag, then marched it toward the fence.

“It’s official,” he yelled. “The gays are here, Canyon County!”

A rusted blue Ford pickup cruised down Americana Drive and slowed in front of Wheeler and his flag. A man in a cowboy hat peered through the window. Wheeler twirled away, pretended not to notice, but when the truck disappeared, he texted the police officers he’d been chatting with all week.

“Hey folks! No rush, but curious to get an ETA for when you will begin barricading Americana?” he typed.

He told himself they were safe. It was 9 a.m. The people who opposed him were most likely at church. But when Wheeler looked up, his stomach turned. The pickup was rattling down Americana again.

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Wheeler had never felt unsafe in Idaho, but he knew that Canyon County was conservative. He’d started volunteering there a few months earlier at the county’s lone LGBTQ+ drop-in center, and he’d often felt uneasy as he drove the half-hour from Boise.

The Nampa area had an abundance of churches and more gun stores than Wheeler had ever seen in one place. When he and Knapp appeared in public together, people sometimes stared.

Canyon County is a Mormon and Church of the Nazarene stronghold where just a quarter of voters supported Joe Biden in the last election. But Nampa had doubled its population over the last two decades to 111,000 people. The former farm town is now Idaho’s third-largest city, and Wheeler suspected that hundreds, if not thousands, of gay and trans people must be living there, too.

“Let’s do a picnic in the park,” he told Knapp as they volunteered at the drop-in center.

At best, they hoped, they might raise $1,000 - enough for T-shirts and rainbow-colored streamers. In their planning documents, they estimated 50 people would attend.

Wheeler called the city in early May, and a staff member suggested he book Lakeview Park, Nampa’s oldest and most scenic public space. Wheeler submitted a permit request a few days later. It would be a “family friendly” event, he wrote. Musicians would perform, and a couple of drag entertainers would, too.

A few days later, Wheeler says, a parks employee told him that city officials were worried that the group planned to sell genital-shaped suckers. No, Wheeler assured them. They would sell pink T-shirts and rainbow stickers - nothing genital-shaped.

The city approved his request in late May. When a local news channel called and wanted to interview the organizers, Wheeler and Knapp decided he would do all the press. He has the kind of optimistic presence that makes people want to buy houses, but most important, he doesn’t live in Canyon County.

Knapp does, and she and her children had already been targeted. The Pride flag they fly outside their house had been torn down eight times. And Knapp’s 14-year-old son, who is trans, had come home multiple times and said friends could no longer hang out with him because of his gender identity.

When Wheeler spoke to the news that afternoon, he described their event as a modest affair. They’d have a food truck, booths with art and homemade goods, a DJ. He didn’t mention the drag show.

Wheeler had grown up thinking of drag as acceptable and mainstream, but he knew that it had become increasingly controversial. More than a dozen states, including Idaho, had tried to ban it, and nearly every week, someone threatened violence against a show.

The Canyon County event would be about “hanging out, enjoying each other’s company,” he told the news.

Later that evening, the station uploaded the segment to its Facebook page. The post soon had more than 2,500 comments, many of which promised that God would punish Wheeler with hell or the kind of fiery destruction the biblical cities Sodom and Gomorrah endured.

“This needs a strong counter protest and then the passing of more legislation that limits these events and ‘visibility,’” one man wrote. “We can reject this Idaho!”

The next day, Nampa Mayor Debbie Kling issued a news release. The event went against what she, the City Council and many in Nampa believed, she said, but the city’s lawyer had told her she had to respect the organizers’ First Amendment rights.

Wheeler’s phone rang soon after. He assumed it was someone wanting to buy a house, so he answered with a chirpy hello. A man interrupted him.

“My family’s been here since 1901,” the man said. “This is God’s country. You’re not welcome here.”

The caller knew a surprising amount about Wheeler. He named other towns Wheeler had lived in, and he said, more than once, “We’ll see how your event goes.”

Wheeler listened. He used the sunny voice he usually reserves for real estate sales, and he told the man that all people were created in the image of God. But when they hung up, Wheeler felt nervous in a way he never had. People knew his name and his face. They were angry, and he had no idea what they might do.

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Wheeler had security cameras installed in his house a few days later. He wasn’t sure how much of a threat the caller posed, but he knew that far-right extremists had targeted other Idaho Pride events.

Two years earlier, 31 members of one white-supremacist group, the Patriot Front, had traveled from 11 states, “dressed like a small army,” a local sheriff said, intending to start a riot at a Pride festival in Coeur D’Alene. Police had intervened before the men did any damage, but officers recovered a smoke grenade, long metal poles and a seven-page document outlining their plans to establish a “confrontational dynamic.”

No one explicitly threatened violence against Canyon County Pride, but as the week wore on, more and more residents registered their disapproval. A local bar announced a “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” with drink specials for straight people. And friends sent Wheeler screenshots showing that people planned to protest.

Wheeler spent the next week meeting with police officers and members of a private security team. At night, he studied a map of the park. He’d planned to stage the food trucks outside the fence, but that left people vulnerable. The drag show wouldn’t happen until the end, but protesters might still be around. What would happen when everyone streamed out of the park?

Worried, he and Knapp set up a call with the queens four days before the event. They still hadn’t announced the drag performances, but they couldn’t hide forever.

“Your safety is a priority, so I wanted to check and see if it’s okay with you if we actually start tagging you in things,” Knapp told a group of nine queens. “How do you feel about, you know, announcing an actual schedule?”

The queens were undaunted. They’d grown up in Arco and Wilder, towns with fewer than 2,000 residents, and for years, they’d felt alone in those rural communities.

“I’m just excited to show a little Brown kid what I would have loved to see,” a queen named Percephone Bias said.

Everyone was smiling as the call ended, but when Knapp posted updates to the group’s Instagram later that day, she didn’t mention the drag show. Instead, she waited until the night before the event, a sunny Saturday when half the town seemed to be parked in a pool. She posted a Lady Gaga song over a plain graphic. “3:15: Drag queen!” She did not tag the performers.

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On Pride morning, Wheeler watched in fear as the pickup truck slowed to a stop. It idled long enough for Wheeler to make out a “Guardians of Freedom” bumper sticker on the back window.

A man stepped out in sagging Wranglers, and Wheeler steeled himself. He’d been prancing around all morning, but now, he moved toward the man with less sway in his hips. The man doffed his cowboy hat. He was there, he said, to set up tables for a nonprofit selling elote en vaso, shucked corn with cheese and lime juice.

Wheeler fanned himself, relieved. Knapp handed him a walkie talkie, and then he high-kicked his way across the park. He had a hundred tasks to do. The mayor’s comments had inspired people to donate more than $18,000, and Wheeler needed to set up portable air conditioners, then meet with the security team he’d hired with the extra money.

The first attendees arrived around 9 a.m., four hours early. A trans woman who called herself Mona Lisa sipped from a 32-ounce “Sweet Land of Liberty” cup and sang Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.” When she reached the fence, she hung a sign that said “Bills off our beautiful bodies.”

A group called Satanic Idaho showed up with silk fans and giant rainbow umbrellas. They planned to stand between any conservative protesters and the Pridegoers.

The first few protesters arrived soon after church let out, and a Satanist dressed as a bat stepped in to block their “Appeal to Heaven” signs with the costume’s wings. A handful of protesters in Make America Great Again hats appeared and drew closer to the entrance.

At 1 p.m., a DJ queued up Willie Nelson’s “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other.” By then, the park was full.

A few seconds later, Wheeler’s walkie talkie crackled. “Heads up,” the head of security said. The far-right Idaho Liberty Dogs had arrived with guns on their hips. Wheeler’s gut tightened. He zigzagged through the crowd, and when he reached the entrance, his chest felt heavy.

A Satanist blew a whistle. A protester rattled the barricade, and Wheeler willed himself to breathe. The Liberty Dogs did have guns, but otherwise, they were just 10 men and women in sunglasses. A Nampa police officer told them to step back. Wheeler nodded, reminded himself he had hired people to protect everyone, then headed back inside. A gay men’s chorus sang an a cappella version of George Michael’s “Faith.”

The head security guard found Wheeler at 1:45. At least 1,500 people had made it in.

“You’re going to hit occupancy soon,” he said. “Once people can’t move around freely, you’ll have to shut down.”

Wheeler dashed toward the exit to peek through a break in the fence. The line stretched 1,000 feet, all the way around the rose garden. He felt dizzy. What if the fire department shut down the event?

Wheeler searched the crowd and found the barrel-chested fire battalion chief surrounded by people blowing bubbles.

“The crowd is a good thing!” he told Wheeler. “It’s good to see this here in Nampa.”

At some point, it became nearly impossible to take a step, so Wheeler removed his cowboy hat and leaned against the stage. A country singer sang “Take It Easy.” A breeze blew. A member of the Idaho Democrats told the crowd that for the first time in a generation, they had a Democrat on the ballot in every district. A gay man was even running for Canyon County commissioner.

By the time the drag show started, the Liberty Dogs were gone.

The crowd screamed and ran up to hand the queens dollar bills. Wheeler wiped his eyes. He’d worked hard to find nine queens who lived in Canyon County. They’d never gotten to perform in their hometowns, but now a Dora the Explorer impersonator strutted through an audience bigger than any of them had ever seen.

Knapp tapped him on the shoulder. A city councilor had arrived. Natalie Zufelt Jangula was a conservative who’d attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Jangula has said she remained outside the Capitol during the riot.)

“I texted the mayor,” Jangula told Knapp and Wheeler. “I told her this is actually a family-friendly event.”

A few minutes before their permit expired, a man who grew up in Nampa took the stage and proposed to his boyfriend. The boyfriend said yes. All 2,000 people seemed to be crying or cheering, and soon, the whole thing was over.

Wheeler tossed his walkie talkie and did the splits. He did several back handsprings, and then he and Knapp danced until the clouds broke into rain. They’d done it. Now, it was time to take down the fence.