What is Hetero Awesome Fest? Perez Hilton drops one-word reaction as event ends with low turnout, brawls, and racism controversy

A two-day festival celebrating "traditional gender norms and heterosexual awesomeness" called Hetero Awesome Fest was held on June 20-21, 2025, in Boise, Idaho. The event, which served as a response to Pride Month, drew a crowd of about 30-50 people over two days, as reported by local station KTVB on June 21.

Organized by Old State Saloon bar owner Mark Fitzpatrick, the two-day event was billed as a “full-on celebration of family values with guts” on its website, further framed as a response to “LGBTQ+ extremism.” On the festival's site, Mark also stated he wanted to bring “delusions like trans fantasies" and gender-affirming care for minors to the public’s attention.

Following the event, celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton summed up its reception in one word.

"Flop!" Perez tweeted.

Perez's tweet about the event (Image via X/@ThePerezHilton)

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What happened at the Hetero Awesome Fest?

The Hetero Awesome Fest garnered wider attention following a series of controversial events. As per Advocate on June 24, musician Daniel Hamrick stripped off a shirt on stage to reveal a "Keep Canyon County Queer" top with a jacket covered in rainbow and LGBTQ+ pride patches. He then launched into Boy, a song about a transgender boy rebelling against a society that rejected him.

Lyrics like "They put him in ballet, he wants to play ball/ What matters to him doesn’t matter at all" visibly enraged Fitzpatrick, who got Hamrick’s mic cut off and then charged onto the stage. Then, in a bizarre series of events, an audience member mistook Fitzpatrick for a protester and tackled him after he approached Hamrick, and the two engaged in a brief scuffle before security broke them up.

Fitzpatrick later told KVTB that Hamrick’s lyrics “go against our values,” and referred to the LGBTQ+ community as “liars and deceivers [who] victimize children.”

"He sang a song with lyrics that go against our values... This is yet another example of lies and deceptions from the Pride community. That’s what they are: liars and deceivers. They do it to victimize children. It’s pathetic and evil," the event organizer told KTVB.

The Hetero Awesome Fest further drew criticism after podcaster Dave Reilly, co-host of The Backlash show, gushed that Boise was a “clean” city because “there aren’t any Black people here.” As reported by Advocate, Reilly said:

"There's still very good bars around, great food, there's the Basque district, again, it's clean, there aren't any Black people here."

This follows a pattern of similar "straight pride" events in recent years that have drawn relatively small crowds. According to Advocate, a 2019 rally in California drew roughly 20 people, who referred to themselves as a "totally peaceful racist group."

Earlier, Fitzpatrick had claimed that the Hetero Awesome Fest was intended to honor the "traditional family unit" and stated that the idea was to combat “cultural trends influenced by liberal progressivism.” As per NBC on April 30, Fitzpatrick wrote an email, saying:

“The Hetero Awesome Fest and Heterosexual Awesomeness Month aim to celebrate the traditional family unit and address concerns about cultural trends influenced by liberal progressivism."

He continued,

"Our event is not about targeting any group but about raising awareness of practices we find troubling, such as the encouragement of ‘gender transitions’ among children or their exposure to inappropriate content.”

Meanwhile, videos of Hamrick's performance have since been circulating across social media platforms.

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The Hetero Awesome Fest's organizers have not announced any plans for future iterations of the event.