This story was written in partnership between RANGE and Stonewall News Northwest, a newsroom serving the rural LGBTQ+ community of the Pacific Northwest. Learn more about Stonewall News Northwest’s work here.
For the last 10 years, Boise has proudly flown the Progress Pride flag from its City Hall.
But in April of 2025, the Idaho Legislature passed a law that made it illegal to fly any flags that aren’t on a pre-approved list — that included the American flag, the POW-MIA flag and official city flags — on government property. The Pride flag was not on the list.
The law, which has no stated penalty for violations, went into effect on April 3, 2025. For the last month, Boise has defied it by continuing to fly both the Progress Pride flag and a flag supporting organ donors from the pole outside City Hall.
This Tuesday though, Boise decided to follow the law — with a little malicious compliance, that is. By a vote of 5-1, the Boise City Council passed a resolution designating the Pride flag, and any other flags they choose to fly, as “official city flags,” putting them in legal compliance with the letter of the law.
On the same evening, a state away, Salt Lake City made a similar decision. Like Idaho, the Utah Legislature had also passed a law banning unsanctioned flags in government buildings. But on Tuesday, the Salt Lake City Council debuted three new official city flags that put the city’s sego lily emblem on top of the Progress Pride flag, the transgender flag and the Juneteenth flag.
And closer to home, also on Tuesday, the city of Bonners Ferry engaged in their own rebellion against the new Idaho flag law. Bonners Ferry sits near the Canadian border, and the city has historically flown the Canadian flag in a show of friendship with their neighbors to the north. The Idaho flag law contains an exception allowing cities to fly other countries’ flags for special occasions, so Bonners Ferry passed a resolution designating every single day of the year as a special occasion, so the city can continue to fly the Canadian flag.
Fighting over the flag
Tuesday’s decision by the City Council, which Boise Mayor Lauren McClean supported, was just the latest move in Boise’s ongoing battle with the state to keep flying the Progress Pride flag.
Even after the law went into effect, Boise has continually displayed the Pride flag in full view of the Capitol building. On April 15 — 12 days after the flag law went into effect — Attorney General Raúl Labrador sent McClean a public letter demanding she take the Pride flag down and threatening to support future legislative action “to deny state tax revenues and other appropriations to the City of Boise or any other governmental entity that does not follow state law.”
On April 25, McClean released a statement of her own, refusing to comply with the law.
“The Constitutional rights of our residents are not subject to — cannot be subject to — the political whims of legislative disapproval,” McLean wrote, “And we will not step back from them simply because the principles our community cherishes make some in state government uncomfortable.”
Read the letter in full below.
On Easter Sunday, which happened to fall on Adolf Hitler’s birthday (a date sometimes used by white nationalists as a day of action), conservative provocateur Casey Whalen posted a video of influencer David Pettinger using a ladder to scale the city’s flag pole. Reaching the top, Pettinger covered the Pride flag and the Donate Life Month flag — which celebrates organ donation — with black garbage bags. Pettinger then added an Appeal to Heaven flag to the pole, which became a symbol of far-right movements across the country after rioters on January 6, 2021, flew it as they stormed the US Capitol building, temporarily halting the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Later the same day, McClean herself came to City Hall to uncover the Pride and Donate Life Month flags and remove the Appeal to Heaven flag.
Though the Republican-sponsored Idaho bill to ban non-government flags passed the legislature by a large margin, there was a fair bit of fighting in the legislature, too. Queer Idahoans testified against the bill, which they felt targeted the Pride flag.
“ All of the images and examples they used during the floor and the committee sessions were showing images of Pride flags,” said Nikson Mathews, the chair of the Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus and 2024 Idaho House of Representatives candidate, who advocated against the bill.
Even some Republicans, like Representative Lori McCann (R-Lewiston), argued against it.
“What it seems like we’re getting to is there’s only one flag that’s objectionable and that’s the rainbow flag we’re seeing,” she said. “We’re again overreaching our ability here to tell our local cities or our counties what they can and can’t do in their own city and that’s where I say that we have a problem. Our [Idaho Republican party] platform clearly defines that we believe in local control, and for that reason I think we are getting way out again in front of our skis.”
In an interesting wrinkle, the bill’s lead sponsor, Heather Scott (R-Blanchard), has her own rich history with flag fights: a few years ago, she threatened to sue news outlets for publishing a photo of her posing with the Confederate flag that she’d posted on her campaign website. Her caption read, “I posed with a Confederate flag on a parade float to show that our First Amendment right is one of the most important rights we have.”
About the bill she sponsored, though, Scott said earlier this year, “We don’t want governments to be promoting division, political ideology or any social movements.”
Queer Boise residents speak out
Though advocates lost the fight against the bill in the legislature, some, including Mathews, were in attendance on Tuesday as the Boise City Council voted to make the Progress Pride flag an official flag.
The chambers that evening were full — “Standing room only,” Mathews told RANGE — and people protesting the city’s support for queer people congregated in the back.
“Some of the people there protesting, got rowdy, got loud, were disruptive,” Mathews said. “They had to be told multiple times to quiet down and let business proceed.”
At one point, the city council had to call a recess to reestablish order in the chambers.
It made for a tense evening, said October, a queer burlesque producer who had a second row seat at the meeting.
October, who asked to use her first name only because of concerns for her safety, said the second the bill passed, the room exploded with yelling from the back. Two men in front of her stood and displayed the American flag.
“The contrast of being relieved and wanting to be excited in that moment, but it’s hard when you’ve got these people yelling behind you — it’s just a reminder that everything is going to be a fight,” October said. “Everything we want to do, everything we want to accomplish, is going to be a fight.”
Despite the protestors, Buck D’Licious, a queer, transgender drag performer based out of Boise, felt a lot of solidarity at the meeting.
“Walking up to the City Hall steps, I was nervous,” D’Licious said. “But as I walked up, the closer I got, the more I just saw this sea of rainbows and rainbow flags. So many people out there to show their support, even though this wasn’t a situation where City Council was taking public comment.”
Mathews was struck by the way the tenor of the council members’ discussion centered queer peoples’ experiences.
“They spoke about the harm of legislators creating laws like this. They spoke about the harm of targeting the community, and making people feel unsafe and unwelcome, and they were very direct and straightforward and they named the harm,” Mathews said. “That is what I wish all of our elected officials and leaders would do with this legislation because this flag ban bill is terrible.”
For D’Licious, who has lived in Idaho their whole life, the vote was an “emotional moment.”
“ I almost cried several times during this hearing, but one of the things that the mayor said that really stood out to me was that in order to uphold our values — diversity and this welcoming city, where it’s safe for everyone — sometimes you have to change the system and that is what they’re choosing to do now,” D’Licious said.
“As a queer person living in Idaho, the past few months have been really hard,” they added. “I haven’t felt very safe in my community, in my hometown, in my home state, and so to come to the City Council meeting and to hear our counselors in overwhelming support of upholding Boise city values of inclusion and welcoming and equity and diversity, that was really, really impactful.”
It was a refreshing difference from the frustration of lobbying at the state level against an avalanche of anti-queer bills, which Mathews has described as “a painful experience,” during which his personal testimony was often disregarded or disrespected by legislators.
Mathews wants allies to “bring that same energy” to harmful legislation at the state level.
This session, the Idaho Legislature passed multiple laws targeting queer people: HB 270, a new indecent exposure law activists fear will be used to target transgender people; HB59, which allows healthcare workers to deny medical care on the basis of religion; HB352, a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that bans any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools; and two pieces of nonbinding legislation that asked the Supreme Court to end the nationwide legalization of gay marriage, and commended the Boise State University’s volleyball team for refusing to play against a volleyball team with a transgender player.
After the meeting ended, October, Mathews and D’Licious celebrated in their own ways.
October went to a pole dance class with another person who had attended the meeting. “ We were talking about it at the studio, just like, ‘Damn, we did it.’”
Mathews went out with a group of queer people.
“We cheered to the decision because you’ve gotta celebrate these moments,” Mathews said. “It’s more than just about a flag. This is about a leader saying ‘No, we’re not gonna do that.’ This is about standing up to what is happening in our country and what is happening in our state.”
D’Licious returned home to their wife.
“I gave them a huge hug and a kiss, and we had dinner. It was fantastic. It felt like a win, and we haven’t had a win in a long time,” they said. “It was just this feeling of elation, even in the face of everything that has happened in the world, in our community and in our state, for this one day, we won.”
Editor’s note: this story has been edited to reflect that Boise has been flying the Pride flag all year round, not just in June, for at least the last four years.
