Over 1,000 people attended the first Rexburg Pride event independent of Flourish Point on Saturday. 

The festival included live musicians, a unity walk to show support for the LGBTQ+ community, over thirty vendors, and booths with information on resources available for LGBTQ+ individuals in Rexburg. 

“We kind of had to scramble to get funding this year,” said Annalisa Waite, the Pride Director and event organizer. 

After Flourish Point lost a considerable amount of funding from the cancellation of an annual grant from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, they weren’t sure if the Rexburg Pride event would even be possible this year. Some members of the community broke off and formed Rexburg Pride, a separate entity from Flourish Point, to throw the annual festival.

“[The split] was to lighten [Flourish Point’s] load,” Waite said. “It was just so they can focus on some of the mental health resources they're working on because of their limited budget.”

Local donors and grassroots fundraising supplied all funding for this year’s Pride event, paying for performers and decorations and renting the stage and surrounding half of Porter Park to host the event. 

Many attendees dressed up to show their support for the LGBTQ+ community, and some attendees’ dogs even sported rainbow-dyed fur. 

“It's very, very important for everyone to be supportive of the community that thinks they need to hide,” said Miss Jay, known as Jay Kilpatrick, and a local Rexburgian Drag Queen.

Miss Jay has attended all but one of the five Pride events held each June in Porter Park since 2021. 

“The first several years of [the Pride festival], everybody was just kind of, like, negative with it,” Kilpatrick said. “But do you see [any protestors] around this year? No, you know, it's been nice. It's been peaceful, you know, and everybody's just here to celebrate.”

The event organizers hired Griffin Elite Security, a private security firm, to provide security at the event. 

Lance Draven Rodriguez, a security guard working at the event, said that they were told specifically to look out for any nudity or violence. He said that the firm worked the event last year and that there were no incidents either last year or this year that he is aware of. 

“Every big event needs [security], you know,” said Savannah McCauley, announcer for the event and a member of the Rexburg Pride Committee.  “You gotta have some security just to make sure things are going okay and going smoothly.”

A group of Evangelical Christians from Calvary Chapel in Rexburg set up a booth to peacefully protest the event. 

“We’re here to love on this community… and show them there’s another way,” said Samantha Hexenjager, a protester who said she formerly associated with the LGBTQ+ community.

This is the group's third year setting up their booth at the Pride event, and Hexenjager said their interactions with the attendees have been sparse and short, but that they will continue to protest the event.

“We’re not here for us,” she said. “We’re here to glorify God.”

History of Rexburg Pride

Rexburg Pride first started in 2021, hosted by Flourish Point.

“Flouish Point is a mental health resource for LGBT people here in Rexburg,” said Doug Pawson, director of events for Rexburg Pride in 2024. “One thing that we noticed was that Idaho Falls Pride has been going strong for years, but we had nothing for the students up here who maybe didn’t have the ability to travel to Idaho Falls.”

Pawson said that the first time Flourish planned Rexburg Pride, it was a bit “hectic.”

“We were like, ‘Oh, we should do a Pride. Ok, let’s do it now,'” Pawson said. “We just kind of had to come up with that event right away, but it’s grown a lot over the past five years and become a big staple of the summertime activities here.”

According to Pawson, Rexburg Pride was much smaller before they were able to connect with other local Prides from places like Idaho Falls and Pocatello.

“The first two years it was a brand new event, so we didn’t have the name recognition, we didn’t have the connections that we needed to have a huge event every year,” Pawson said. “But the past couple of years, we’ve become really popular, and we’ve been connecting with other Prides in the local area.”

Flourish Point sponsored the event from 2021-24 through grants from the state Department of Health and Wellness, but recently lost the grant. Pawson said that this year, Rexburg Pride has become its own LLC and nonprofit run by community sponsorships and donations.

Pawson named a few of these sponsors, such as Madison Health and Griffin Elite Security.

“We have over 30 vendors who are attending,” Pawson said. “We’ve got four or five food options coming as well as a few presenting sponsors.”

Pawson said that over the past four years, Rexburg Pride has only become more popular.

“We’ve consistently had over 1000 people come to our event,” Pawson said. “Our biggest year was last year, we had 1400 people attend, and we’re expecting even more because it’s our fifth year anniversary.”

Pawson said that the event is consistently becoming safer, and they haven’t had any issues with security.

Pawson said that in order to have an event such as this in a public place, they need to get a permit from the city in advance.

“There’s a whole permitting process in the city where you apply, you tell them what your event is all about, you tell them what you’re doing, you tell them what you need,” Pawson said. “They evaluate your security, your safety and everything. Then they tell you, depending on how many people are coming, you pay a percentage cost to have that event, and then you have that permit for the park.”

Pawson said that the city has come to expect a permit application for Rexburg Pride every year in June.

“We’re making a bigger name for ourselves every year,” Pawson said. “The mayor has come to expect my call on a permit and everything, so they know we’re coming every year and it’s just been a really great event every summer.”

Getting a Permit

Public gathering permits are approved by the Rexburg Police Department, the Rexburg Fire Department and the Rexburg City Clerk's Office, according to Marianna Gonzalez, the deputy city clerk.

The mayor and other city department heads meet with the group requesting a permit to understand exactly what will take place.

"Public ​places ​like ​our ​parks ​are ​considered ​public ​areas, " Gonzalez said. "And ​it's ​for ​all ​residents, anybody ​that ​wants ​to ​use ​the ​park, ​because ​their ​taxpayer money ​pays ​for ​the ​park, they're allowed ​to ​request ​to ​use ​it."

City ordinances restrict certain activities in parks, such as alcohol consumption, nicotine use and any unapproved vending, as enumerated in Rexburg Municipal Code chapter 12.4.

If the city bars an event that is not in violation of the Rexburg City code, they risk getting sued.

"We can't discriminate," Gonzalez said.

Once a permit has been issued, the city can revoke the permit and close the event if it violates city code. For example, excessive noise or hosting activities that were not disclosed to city officials could warrant revoking a permit, according to Gonzalez.

Community members have expressed concern about inappropriate drag performances potentially appearing in the Rexburg Pride event before, at a Rexburg City Council meeting on June 7, 2023.

Idaho Code title 18, chapter 15 prohibits public erotic exposure to minors, and the City, as expressed by Rexburg Mayor Jerry Merrill in previous statements, is committed to ensuring that Rexburg Pride is an appropriate event, both through coordination with the event planners beforehand and policing during the event.

Previous Controversy

The Public Religion Research Institute’s 2020 Census of American Religion found 68% of Madison County to be self-reporting members of the Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints — a religion that teaches against homosexual behavior. 

Some Rexburg locals have protested the Pride event since it first started in 2021. 

In 2023, protestors specifically upset by the presence of Drag Queens at the event engaged with the Pride attendees in what the Rexburg police called “chest bumping” before security and police officers stepped in. 

Protestors attended Rexburg’s town hall meetings, demanding the city council take action to shut down the Pride event. 

The protesters’ demands were partially met, and the Pride event was required to move the drag show portion of the event indoors, rather than in the public park.

Rexburg’s mayor, Jerry Merrill, expressed concern about contention in the community over the controversy at that time. 

In 2024, the protestors took a different approach, and preemptively rented out the stage in Porter Park for every Saturday in June in an attempt to stop the Pride event from happening, according to Annalisa Waite, the Pride Director for this year’s event. 

Flourish Point resorted to renting a portable stage and setting up on the other side of Porter Park, while protesters set up a projector and played anti-transgender videos on the side of the park they had rented.

According to Waite, most of this resistance was organized by a conservative, anti-LGBTQ+ group called Mass Resistance. The group seems to have lost momentum, though, since the leader of the local chapter moved away from Rexburg. 

“As soon as the calendar opened up, we rented the park [for the 2025 Pride event]. We've had it rented the whole year,” Waite said.