Our state is at a crossroads, where we face two different versions of what Idaho could be or what it is becoming – an Idaho that honors human rights and dignity and respects our individuality, or an Idaho where extremist views have captured the majority party and dictate what you can believe and how you can live your life.
This session casts a dreary shadow on Idaho’s future; members of the majority party introduced a record number of bills that restricted individual rights, interfered with businesses and health care organizations, violated the founders’ intent to separate church and state, criminalized physicians for providing medical care, attempted to constrict access to the ballot, and relentlessly attacked the LGBTQ community.
These bills were introduced within a larger context of a growing Christian Nationalist movement in our country and in Idaho, a movement adopted by the Republican party and their chair, Dorothy Moon, out of fear that their “way of life” is being challenged and eroded.
This fear has evolved over the past decade, a small group of extreme conservatives initially chipping away at affirmative action and Title IX law with a fledgling Idaho Freedom Foundation supporting them. What started out as an annoyance, has evolved into an all-out assault on diversity and inclusion, women’s rights, and individual freedoms.
In 2020, after George Floyd was murdered and white Americans began to acknowledge the effects of institutional racism, the GOP spun tall tales about Critical Race Theory being taught in schools and introduced numerous bills to censor teaching of race and racism. They attacked the first amendment and tried to limit a teacher’s ability to teach about the real impacts of racism in America.
And most notably, they used this dog whistle to attack funding public schools and higher education, the ultimate goal being to destabilize public education and free thought.
Two years later, their dog whistle CRT obsession has shifted to the topic of gender with drastic and hateful attacks on people who are gay, trans, women, and anyone who doesn’t conform to traditional gender roles.
This GOP legislation works to silence, censor, and erase anyone who doesn’t conform to traditional patriarchy, where straight, white males are in control of work life, school curriculum, and family life. We saw bills to:
- Ridiculously codify that there are “only 2 sexes” and control individual behavior from bathroom and locker room use (S1100) to banning “drag show” performances (H265) to outlawing care for teens who have gender dysphoria (H71);
- Mandate public schools to receive private donations of placards to post in schools that say, “In God we trust,” (H202) violating the separation of church and state;
- Limit opportunities for accurate sex education for students and to reinforce specific religious values in code instead science and research (H272, S1099, H288);
- Harass libraries and their staff enacting punitive civil bounties to pressure censorship of content and ban books, especially books with LGBTQ content (H314, S1187, S1188);
- Criminalize interstate travel for teens to access abortion care even in the case of rape and incest (H242);
- Reinforce Idaho’s total abortion ban that has criminalized doctors for basic miscarriage management and emergency treatment for high-risk pregnancies (H374);
- Reject legislation to continue a valuable maternal mortality commission that would shed light on why we have so many maternal deaths (H81);
- Refuse to extend Medicaid benefits for mothers and their infants 12 months postpartum (H201);
- Reject a bill to provide free menstrual products for girls in public schools (H313).
Idaho’s Republican party has joined the national backlash to a social movement that has worked to create more inclusive opportunities for people to get involved in public life and for kids to feel like they belong in school; a movement where we have worked to include people who have been historically pushed to the margins and experienced discrimination while we seek justice in social systems. When did justice become a bad thing to Republicans?
I wrote about this backlash in 2020; the sexism and racism simmering below the surface has boiled over and broken the surface, crashing down in violent waves.
“This backlash against “justice for all” is not uncommon. When people in power feel their way of life is threatened, a common reaction to protect and fight back emerges,” the Idaho GOP is on the attack to “protect their way of life.”
However, as Idahoans we must push back on the fear mongering that limits our freedom and leads to autocratic practices and discrimination. There is enough world for all of us to share. We must unravel the myths of scarcity that drive a wedge between neighbors. We must all take a deep breath and remember the dream for our country — a dream where everyone has an opportunity to succeed, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.
The tale of two Idahos is upon us. We are at a crossroads.
The current path of autocratic policies is creating an unwelcome climate for business and economic growth. Businesses seek out communities with strong public schools, high quality health care, child care infrastructure, a thriving arts and entertainment community, and a solid transportation infrastructure.
However, what we have experienced in the past several years under one party rule is a battering ram taken to individual rights, attacks on our LGBTQ community, attacks on public schools with an effort to defund and destabilize them, resistance to build broadband infrastructure, puritanical attitudes that increase a culture of censorship and ignorance, intentional disruptions in funding child care systems to support a growing workforce, and barbaric policies driving women’s reproductive health care back to the 18th century.
This is not the Idaho most of us want to live in.
I want to live in a state where everyone has an opportunity to succeed, to be who they are, and live the life they want to live. I want communities where everyone is welcome and we celebrate differences instead of condemning them.
I want an Idaho where people can live without fear and disdain from their government, to feel safe walking down the street fully participating in society. I want to see a government that fulfills its commitment to support high quality public schools, maintain our transportation system, mitigate human impacts on our environment, support an effective health care system, and manage our public lands to preserve our rugged and wild way of life for generations to come.
We can achieve these things with compassion, openness, critical thinking, and, yes, even restraint.
As John Lewis said, “Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”
I am committed to working to do what it takes to ensure everyone is free and has opportunities to succeed. Together, we can take action to create a more fair and just society.