'Drag Kids' event at Boise Pride becomes subject of political pushback

When Joseph Kibbe attended the first Boise Pride Festival in 1989, he and about two dozen other participants wore paper bags over their heads to hide their faces from potentially violent onlookers.

At the first festival parade two years later, Kibbe and his friends were greeted by protesters with nooses in front of the Statehouse.

“Boise was a very different place back then — it was not a safe time to be LGBTQIA,” he said.

Still, for Kibbe — then a junior high student who faced frequent beatings at school, now the vice principal of the Boise Pride Festival board — the event was the one place where he felt like part of a community.

“I could come and be who I wanted to be here, who I actually was,” Kibbe said on Friday, just a few hours before this year’s festival was set to begin. “That was a huge morale booster, and why I’m so passionate about what we’re doing today.”