‘Firestorm’ over Pride flags hits Boise’s North End Neighborhood Association

BOISE – A Tuesday neighborhood meeting in the North End was packed – every seat filled, people leaning against the walls and sitting cross-legged on the floor.

It wasn’t the typical turnout for the North End Neighborhood Association, whose board meetings usually focus on putting together the Hyde Park Street Fair, maintaining the neighborhood’s historic character and reviving its newsletter. The board usually has trouble rustling up interest among neighbors, President Erik Hagen told the Idaho Statesman, and has for years been trying to fill vacant seats.

But on Tuesday, the neighbors were out in force. More than a dozen decided to vie for the four open seats on the board, seemingly prompted by controversy over what has become one of the most divisive issues in Idaho: LGBTQ+ Pride flags.

A new state law bars displays of non-“official” flags on government property and has implications for the neighborhood’s annual display of Pride flags along its main thoroughfare, Harrison Boulevard, whose median is under the jurisdiction of the Ada County Highway District.

“This has become a firestorm of sorts,” Hagen said.

None of the candidates on Tuesday mentioned Pride flags explicitly, though board member Travis Campion told the Statesman after the meeting that he viewed this as a strategic choice rather than a reflection of candidates’ priorities. He declined to say which of the candidates opposed the Pride flag displays, and said he wasn’t sure whether the new state law was driving the increased focus on the issue.

In the past, the flags displayed along Harrison Boulevard have been vandalized and even stolen on a regular basis. Last year, more than 20 flags were stolen.

“As to why now? I don’t know the answer to that,” Campion told the Statesman in a Wednesday Facebook message. “I’m sure their agenda extends beyond anything that has to do with the flags. I just don’t know to what extent.”

No decisions were made to fill the vacant board seats at Tuesday’s meeting.

North End board member warns of takeover by right-wing ‘zealots’

The decision to fly Pride flags has become a political hot potato.

The neighborhood association’s official stance is that it has nothing to do with the flags flying on the Harrison Boulevard poles, even though its members have at times volunteered to hang them up or donated to support Boise Pride when flags were stolen, Hagen said.

In February, Donald Williamson, the executive director of Boise Pride, told the Statesman that the organization was not directly connected to the flags, and instead coordinated with a separate North End nonprofit to put them up.

The boulevard’s median is controlled by ACHD, while its flag poles are the property of the city of Boise. The neighborhood association has an agreement with the highway district to fly U.S. and Idaho state flags on two of the three slots on each pole, but it does not control what flies in the third slot, which has traditionally been left open for outside organizations, Campion said.

All of this has led to confusion among residents about who or what group decides to display the Pride flags on Harrison, Hagen said.

But it’s clear that displays of Pride flags were a target of the new state law: In her presentation of the bill last session, sponsor Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, distributed photographs to lawmakers of Pride flags along Harrison Boulevard.

The law, as well as a nationwide pullback from companies that had publicly supported the LGBTQ+ community, have brought the issue to the top of the North End agenda, with conservative residents – a minority in that part of the city – expressing interest in joining the board to prevent it from flying any Pride flags, and liberal residents trying to join the board to counter those efforts.

Earlier Tuesday, Campion framed the debate in stark terms in a Facebook post.

Right-wing activists, he warned, were “making an attempt to replace the board with their own people,” whom he called “zealots” and “radical fundamentalists.”

An unknown “mysterious” person in recent days hung a second Idaho state flag from the flag poles on Harrison, filling the vacant third slot often used for Pride flags. Hagen and Campion said they don’t know for sure who put up those flags, but the intent was clear.

“The whole point is to exclude anybody else from putting up flags there,” Hagen said.

In the leadup to candidates’ introductions Tuesday evening, board Vice President Kari Forney emphasized that the board was looking for someone who was interested in a wide range of topics, highlighting that it was mostly nonglamorous volunteer work and not a “political” role. Forney did not respond to an emailed request Wednesday for comment about whether debate over flag displays had prompted Tuesday’s significant turnout.

Hagen, for his part, worries about liability for the neighborhood association if something goes wrong – in an extreme case, for example, if people protesting against a flag accidentally pull down a pole and injure someone.

“We’ve been told by our liability insurance that we should not be in the flag-hanging business,” he said.