Why “Radical” Russ Left Idaho (Have You Read the News?)

Idaho is one of four remaining (and the most punitive) states without any sort of legal marijuana. Merely being high in public is a jailable offense. Making a bong is a felony.

Seriously, the State of Idaho has such a vendetta against marijuana that it was the last state in the USA to pass legislation to allow for industrial hemp—the non-psychoactive cannabis cousin that Mitch McConnell worked to legalize federally in 2018. Even with its hemp law, hemp is still illegal in Idaho unless you have a state permit for it.

Once, Idaho State Police crowed about its “largest ever drug bust.” It was 6,700lbs of legal hemp being trucked to Colorado.

In my twenty years working in marijuana law reform, I’m often asked, “which will be the last state to legalize pot?” I have always had my money on Idaho. Remember, this is the only state where a governor vetoed a non-psychoactive CBD oil bill for epileptic kids, citing the risks to “public safety” in a state where you can take a loaded AR-15 into the state capitol.

In fact, to my knowledge, the State of Idaho is the only political jurisdiction in America that went out of its way to proactively declare that marijuana shall never be legal for any purpose.

In Idaho, it is perfectly legal to refuse to take your child to a doctor or give them medicine if you believe only God heals the sick, such that there are infant graveyards like in pioneer days.

My ex-wife’s grandfather was the co-founder of the Followers of Christ sect that prays their sick kids to death because they only believe in “faith healing.” Because of that, she lived with a cranial injury from age 11 and endometriosis from age 12 that she couldn’t treat until she was 18.

She’s got dead infant cousins in those Idaho graveyards. If only their parents had been cultivating a cannabis plant, they could’ve done some prison time.

In Idaho, aerial fireworks are illegal to fire off, but not illegal to buy, so long as you promise to only shoot them where they are legal, and North Dakota is the nearest state where they are. There are fireworks stores off the freeway near Boise where the floor is painted blue on one side, red on the other. The fireworks on the blue floor are the legal ones and on the red floor are the illegal ones.

So, no, cancer patient, you can’t have a joint, even with a note from your doctor. But you can buy all the Roman candles you like, as long as you swear not to use them.

Guns everywhere. No license required for anything. Concealed carry anywhere. AR-15s with bump stocks and 100rd barrel mags carried openly into the state capitol by a wife beater? Sure! But whatever you do, don’t bring a joint with you.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, Idaho is third behind Mississippi and Arkansas in lax gun laws.

Since 1995, Republicans have controlled House, Senate, Governor, Sec’y of State, & Attorney General. Idaho’s Senate is 28–7 Republican (the most Democrats since ’95), Idaho’s House is 59–10 (fewest Democrats since ’00). Idaho went 59% Trump in ’16, 64% Trump in ’20.

Idaho also has the highest per capita Mormon population outside of Utah, and some of the LDS Church’s high-ranking officials also serve in the legislature as Republicans.

Idaho has been waiting to ban abortion since 2020, when it passed a “trigger ban” meant to take effect as soon as Roe v. Wade fell, as it did in 2022 because Ruth Bader Ginsburg wouldn’t retire, Barack Obama cowed to Mitch McConnell stealing a Supreme Court nomination, Hillary Clinton didn’t bother campaigning in Wisconsin, and Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees boldly lied in confirmation hearings.

Idaho’s law has the worst of everything on reproductive freedom. All abortions are illegal, unless the mother is on death’s door, or if she’s a victim of rape or incest who has reported it to the police within the first trimester. Like Texas law, private citizens can collect a bounty for turning in women who have an abortion.

Idaho even went so far as to challenge, all the way to the Supreme Court, the federal law that mandates abortion healthcare to save the life of the mother. The Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in January and allowed Idaho to continue letting women nearly die, before deciding in June that Idaho should try to save women’s lives while the lower courts examine this issue further.

Idaho’s “Abortion trafficking” felony makes it illegal to help a pregnant teen girl leave Idaho for abortion healthcare out-of-state without her parent’s permission. The intent of this law would have state police interrogating any drivers with a teen girl in the car heading toward Oregon or Washington. It also makes driving the teen to the post office to pick up abortion pills a felony. A girl impregnated by her father is going to have that baby and there’s nothing you can do about it.

In Idaho, it is a felony to provide the healthcare trans kids need to escape increased risk of suicide. According to the ACLU: The law bans puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and certain surgeries for transgender youth, threatening medical providers with felony charges and up to 10 years in prison.

The argument is that kids are too young to be making such a decision. Their minds aren’t fully developed to take on a risk that could leave them with permanent irreversible physical damage and lifelong effects on their mental health. There is a great deal of social pressure surrounding this decision, as well, and we can’t know for certain they really want to make that decision for themselves or because of peer pressure. While there may be those who later in life excel and thrive after that decision, there are also those who regret the decision and cannot undo the toll that decision has wrought upon their mind and body. I’m talking, of course, about the decision to play tackle football, which never seems to occur to the “what about the children?” chorus that rails against transgender healthcare for teens.

Idaho is well-known to be one of the whitest states in the U.S. and has for decades been a sort of Mecca (they’ll hate that metaphor) for the white Christian Nationalist types.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the state’s half-assed approach to the federal Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Idaho was the 47th state to recognize the holiday, but then named it “Martin Luther King Jr. – Idaho Human Rights Day.” It’s the “All Holidays Matter” way to celebrate Dr. King.

It is illegal in Idaho for anyone to dance nude in a private facility to an audience of adults—or what most people think of as a “strip bar” or “gentleman’s club.”

Idaho does have such clubs, but the rules are as prude as you’d expect. There can be no hard alcohol sold in any such club where dancers are exposing themselves for tips. In the clubs where beer and wine are sold, the dancers must wear bikinis—breast and nipples and butt crack and pubic area must always be covered. A bikini a woman could wear in public at the beach, like a thong, could be against the law if she wore it while dancing in a club.

Only in clubs where no alcohol is sold—which then lower their entry age to 18 from 21—may dancers go topless.

Idaho has a Clear Indoor Air Act, but it only got rid of smoking in restaurants and public buildings. Smoking in bars is legal (though some voluntarily restrict it). Just don’t show your titties.

The Guardian reported that a professor at Boise State University was involved with spreading far-right hatred online.

While other states are protecting trans people from the harassment of deadnaming (addressing them by their pre-transition name) and misgendering (purposefully using pronouns counter to their gender), Idaho proactively protected the bigots who engage in that harassment.

Bonus disgust: Sen. Ben Adams, who represents Nampa, the town where I was born, explained the “common sense” bill to permit deadnaming and misgendering trans people.

“Just because you say it, it doesn’t make it real. I have a 3-year-old and a 9-year-old and if I wear a gorilla suit, my child might actually believe I’m a gorilla,” Adams said on the Senate floor. “But that doesn’t make me a gorilla. I’m still a human being in a gorilla suit.”

I have my doubts about that, Senator.

NPR reported: Police in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and the FBI are investigating after a team in the NCAA Women’s basketball tournament said they were racially harassed while staying in the city.

Members of the University of Utah women’s team told police someone in a truck displaying a confederate flag yelled racial slurs and revved the engine in a menacing way as players and staff walked to dinner last Thursday. They say that same truck and a second were waiting as the team returned from dinner and followed them back to their hotel.

Idaho passed a law this year that allows landlords to reject Section 8 housing vouchers that help poor people secure housing. It also bans any city from enacting any sort of rent controls.

To say that Idaho isn’t a great place for Black folks is putting it mildly. The entire Black population of the state (12,700) wouldn’t completely fill the state’s largest basketball arena (13,390). Until the 1990s, there was an active neo-Nazi compound in the state.

Because of the abortion ban (#6), gynecologists and obstetricians are fleeing the state. Since the ban took effect, 51 of the state’s 227 doctors left Idaho, and only two doctors came to Idaho.

In addition, two entire hospital obstetrics programs have closed.

Since the abortion ban, women who have had severe life-threatening complications in their pregnancy are airlifted across the border to Oregon, Washington. or Montana for the healthcare that is banned in Idaho. Stories of women rejected from emergency room after emergency room for miscarriages abound, with some bleeding out in the parking lot, some developing sepsis, hoping they live long enough at death’s door to be deemed worthy of a “life of the mother” exception abotion.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver had a wonderful segment about the Idahoans on a crusade to ban books at their local library with themes they find offensive. The only catch? The library didn’t have any copies of the banned books on the shelves anyway.

Idaho passed a law that forces libraries to move a book to an “adults-only section” if someone files a complaint. The problem for the tiny library in Donnelly is that there isn’t enough room in it to have an “adults-only section.” The solution, of course, is to declare the whole library “adults-only” and forbid any unaccompanied minors from entry.

A North Idaho blogger named Summer Bushnell deceptively edited the performance of a Post Falls drag queen Mona Liza Million (aka Eric Posey) by placing a censorship blur over his genital area in a video of Posey’s performance at Pride. In fact, Posey’s genitals were never exposed, but Bushnell claimed that Posey was exposing himself to the children in attendance at the Pride event. Posey sued for defamation and was awarded over one million dollars.

Idaho by law rejects the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion at all public colleges. Higher education institutions cannot inquire about a prospective student’s race, sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation, as well as their views on any subject of social justice.

Idaho has passed a law banning the teaching of critical race theory in Idaho schools, something that isn’t taught in Idaho schools except maybe some higher level criminal justice classes at a university.

From the Daily Mail: An Idaho bar has opted to counter LGBTQ Pride Month by celebrating ‘Heterosexual Awesomeness Month’ during the month of June, saying that without them ‘none of us would be here.’

Old State Saloon in Eagle, Idaho, which is just outside of Boise, announced this past Wednesday that each Monday would be ‘Hetero Male Monday.’

Any man dressed ‘like a heterosexual male’ will be entitled to a free draught beer, according to a Facebook post from the bar. 

From KTVB: BOISE, Idaho — An Eagle bar has gotten local attention in the 18 months it’s been open after holding promotional events such as Conspiracy Theory Trivia Night – where you can win an AR-15 – Christian singles mingle nights and hosting flat-earther events.

When my hometown in the conservative county outside Boise’s held its first ever LGBT Pride event, the mayor proclaimed that Nampa is “against what she [and] the city council… believe.”

Reporting in Slate, Sarah Stankorb writes: The people who spoke to me included women who understood a wifely duty of sexual availability meant they could not refuse their husbands, girls touched inappropriately at [private religious school], students whom [they] asked intrusive questions about their sexual activity, and one girl coached in counseling by [them] to forgive her father for inappropriately touching her and watching her shower.

There’s not much you can’t get away with in Idaho by claiming it’s your religion. Only in the last four years has Idaho repealed its statutes criminalizing adultery, fornication, and sodomy, and only recently raised its age of consent to marriage to 16.

Idaho forbids any taxpayer money from being spent for abortion education. The law is so strict that teachers and professors—recipients of public funds—are restrained from discussing abortion. The measure’s free speech constitutionality has yet to be challenged because the Attorney General has promised not to enforce the statute, thereby robbing the professors who sued over the law any standing with which to sue, as the judge ruled.

So, then, Idaho still has a felony law that threatens 14 years in jail and a $10,000 fine if a professor “promotes abortion,” which can’t be challenged as a threat to free speech because the Attorney General won’t prosecute it. Unless, perhaps, the next Attorney General does prosecute, and then that professor would have the standing to go through an arrest and booking and mugshot and their name all over the news and the expense and time to file another lawsuit which would probably be in their favor.

As @Shootfilm on Threads so eloquently puts it: Idaho is getting “Don’t Tread On Me” specialty license plates. So let me get this straight. You don’t like the government, but you’re going to give the government extra money for your plates to say you don’t like the government. Rocket scientists!

In the city of Meridian (next door to Boise), a woman bought a tiny house on wheels. A friend of hers agreed to let her park it on his property next to his house. That’s when they learned that while it is perfectly legal for the friend to place his own tiny house on his own property next to his main house, it is illegal to place somebody else’s tiny house in that same spot.

That’s right, she can’t park her tiny house on his property and pay rent for the space. But he could park his own tiny house on his property and charge her rent to live in it. Essentially, the law incentivizes her to not own her own tiny house.

For a state with some of the greatest natural beauty in North America, Idahoans are fiercely anti-environmentalism. You’ll see plenty of those “rolling coal” diesel pickups, purposefully belching out thick black smoke to “own the libs.” It’ll probably have an “Earth First: We’ll Log The Other Planets Later” bumper sticker on it. One person in my comments noted seeing a “Welcome Environmentalists: we haven’t had a good lynching since ’56,” which again brings the racism of the state into the picture.

From @orstoddard

Idaho, in its anti-abortion, anti-trans zeal, passed a law that requires parental permission before a minor can receive any healthcare. While they were mainly considering preventing doctors from providing abortion or gender-affirming healthcare, they forgot that the administration of a rape kit—the testing for DNA evidence of the crime—is a medical procedure.

Recall from #7 above that it’s a felony to help the pregnant teen girl who was raped by her father to cross the border for an abortion. Recall from #6 above that the exception for rape or incest for an abortion in the first trimester in Idaho can only be in effect if the rape has been reported to the police. Now, to report that rape to the police, the victim of incest has to get her rapist’s permission to administer the rape kit that reports the rape that allows her to have an abortion.

One woman’s testimony about the abortion horrors described in #6, #7, and #18.

https://www.threads.net/@thetnholler/post/C_14npEOnUH?xmt=AQGzj8TQIydoVzR5ktV5HDkXmrelpVW_VlCYV-LbASv0ig

From Erin in the Morning: Boise State University has forfeited their volleyball game to SJSU rather than play a team with a trans player. She was forcibly outed as trans by an anti-trans magazine, and then a teammate.

Gov. Little signed an executive order directing the state department of education to oppose all federal efforts for trans recognition and inclusion in schools. No word on whether that was why Boise State refused to play SJSU after learning there was a trans athlete in the team—despite having played against her the past two years prior.

Idaho’s Attorney General is suing to prevent the American Academy of Pediatricians from recommending gender-affirming healthcare for trans kids. Not just trans kids in Idaho. Trans kids anywhere in the United States.

At a candidates forum in the northern Idaho town of Kendrick, things got heated between a male Republican and the female Democrat vying to take his sear.

From the Moscow Pullman Daily News:

Trish Carter-Goodheart, a Democratic House candidate for Seat A in the district, said in a news release that after a question was asked about discrimination and whether it exists in Idaho, she said that, “just because someone hasn’t personally experienced discrimination, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Racism and discrimination are real issues here in Idaho, as anyone familiar with our state’s history knows.”

Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Viola, reportedly responded to Carter-Goodheart, “I’m so sick and tired of this liberal bull—-. Why don’t you go back to where you came from?”

Not only was Trish Carter-Goodheart born and raised in Northern Idaho… she’s a member of the Nez Perce tribe. Northern Idaho IS where she comes from, long before the Foreman family ever set foot in North America.

Since Idaho requires parental consent for any medical care for a minor, a teenage girl going into labor can’t be treated until doctors can find her homeless mom or her incarcerated grandmother for permission.

From the Washington Post:

The patient, 36 weeks pregnant, was having mild but frequent contractions. She had come to the emergency room in this small lakeside town because she was new to the area and had no doctor. In most cases, physician Caitlin Gustafson would have begun a pelvic exam to determine whether labor had started. This time, she called the hospital’s lawyers.

Mom-to-be Aleah was only 13 years old. And under a new Idaho law requiring parental consent for nearly all minors’ health care, Gustafson could be sued for treating her because the girl had been brought in by her great-aunt.

What followed were more than two frantic hours of trying to contact Aleah’s mother, who was living in a car, and her grandmother, who was the teen’s legal guardian. The grandmother finally gave verbal consent for the exam — from the Boise-area jail where she was incarcerated on drug charges.

REMEMBER, “drug charges” in Idaho can be weed.

AP: A regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccines to residents in six counties after a narrow decision by its board.

Southwest District Health appears to be the first in the nation to be restricted from giving COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccinations are an essential function of a public health department.

Don’t worry folks, it’s just the Southwest District, only six counties, not including the one Boise is in, but including the one I was born in and in which my elderly parents still live.