Badpuppy Gay Today

Wednesday, 07 May 1997

In 1966 John Gerassi published "The Boys of Boise," a well-documented study of homophobia and politics in Idaho's foremost city. The book was a detailed and true account of a politically-inspired witchhunt in which persons attracted to their own sex were hunted, publicly shamed, and punished. There were disappearances and suicides.

Idaho's Board of Education has now turned thumbs down on funding a study that would have explored the origins of gay communities in the Pacific Northwest. The board's vote marks only the second time in a decade when it has refused to stand behind a research project. "Obviously," observed one history student," Idaho still doesn't want to face up to the climate out of which those Boise witchhunts emerged."

The Idaho Board of Education gave a different reason for refusing to fund the study, however. "It a nutshell, I believe the feeling was that this particular project was out of sync with the Idaho state taxpayers," said Dr. Raymond Barton, executive director of the board.

A total of $439,300 for 15 other April agenda Board projects was approved. Barton says that the eight members of the board were unanimous in their decision to disapprove of the gay-communities study grant proposed by Peter G. Boag, an associate professor of history at Idaho State University.

"It's shocking and sad," said a much disappointed Professor Boag, "I believe that the state Board of Education refused to fund my grant because it does deal with homosexuality, the development of homosexual communities, and it deals with the issue of sex."

Professor Boag also said he believed that the board's decision was "a homophobic reaction." Prior to his presentation of the project to the board, Boag had put his proposal into the hands of out-of-state experts and was recommended for a grant by the Higher Education Research Council, which advises the board. The proposal, reportedly, had scored a high grade.

The board, in a near-simultaneous decision, which it denied was related to the rejected history project, voted to change the membership of the research council, replacing top research officials, including graduate school deans and vice-provosts, with the presidents of Idaho's four public institutions.

Asked about the strange timing, Dr. Barton said that the research council shuffle was a "temporary substitution," made to shift research to issues of more pressing importance.

Philosophy professor Russell Wahl, chair of the Idaho State University Faculty Senate, said he believed the decision to change the research council's membership was indeed linked to the turned-down gay history project. Addressing the board's decision to avoid a living part of Idaho's history, he said, "I think this is a shame that this happened. It does not send a good message to faculty doing research."