'I Love You... [but] You’re Going to Hell': Inside One Man’s War on Pride

The founder of Hetero Awesome Fest, who has described the so-called LGBTQ agenda as “wicked and perverse,” speaks with Uncloseted.

Over the last year, Idaho-based bar owner Mark Fitzpatrick has gained national attention for putting on “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month,” during which he held events that included straight couples receiving a 15% discount on Wednesdays and straight men “dressed like heterosexual male[s]” receiving a free draft beer on “Hetero Male Monday.”

Fitzpatrick, who has described the LGBTQ community as “wicked, perverse and [one that] victimizes children,” is taking it a step further this year. He’s launched a 501(c)(3) charity, Heterosexual Awesomeness Inc., where he’s raising money with “DOGE-style transparency” for a two-day event in June that’s meant to be a Straight Pride, or—as one promo video describes it—a “declaration that faith, family and freedom are worth protecting.”

The organization says, “We’re slugging it out against the gutless enemies of traditional values,” including “abortion’s life-crushing lies … Big Pharma’s pill-pushing scams, and the LGBTQ+ agenda’s anti-kin chaos. … From exposing human trafficking’s evil to torching woke indoctrination in schools, we’ve got 7 non-negotiable stands—each one a hill we’ll die on to protect the sacred core of family. This is where we fight and where we win, armed with grit and God’s design.”

Efforts to hold so-called Straight Pride events have taken place around the world for years. Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party displayed a heterosexual Pride flag in 2015; and in 2019, Super Happy Fun America—a far-right group that has been allied with the Proud Boys—put on a “Straight Pride” in Boston.

We wanted to learn about Fitzpatrick’s motivations and why he believes fighting back against Pride Month—which he has said exists so LGBTQ people can march down the street and engage in “disgusting and criminal” activity—is a charitable cause. 

Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:

Spencer Macnaughton: Hi everyone, I'm here today with Mark Fitzpatrick, founder of the non-profit Heterosexual Awesomeness, Inc. And also the person putting on Hetero Awesomeness Fest in June. Mark, thanks so much for chatting with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Mark Fitzpatrick: Hey, absolutely. Thank you for having me on. I think this is gonna be an enlightening conversation.

SM: Absolutely. So let's start right away for people who haven't heard about it before. Tell me about the evolution story of Hetero Awesome Fest.

MF: So a year ago, none of this existed. And I was just a bar owner for Old State Saloon, which is in Eagle, Idaho, just outside Boise.

And our bar is an overtly conservative, Christian-type of a place. We have Sunday morning Bible studies. We have events like conspiracy theory trivia nights, where we give away AR-15s to the winners. We host a lot of political parties, GOP parties, etc. So going into last year in May. And it was just said, “Oh, we don't want to go downtown because of all the stuff going on with Pride.” And it's just something that has gotten so extreme. And I said, “Well, what if we, you know, celebrated, you know, God's design for sexuality, heterosexuality.” And I just thought, “Man, that's awesome.” So Hetero Awesome.

And so we announced at our bar that during [June] we would be celebrating heterosexual awesomeness. We did “Beers for Breeders” on Monday where if you're a heterosexual male and you just walk in the door, you get a free beer. I was met with just an overwhelming amount of extreme vitriolic response from the LGBTQ community online. And so going through that experience really opened my eyes to the depths of how evil at least a decent chunk of the community is. I think over time I've become stronger and stronger feeling that people need to stand up for the beliefs that they think are right. So we're approaching June, and I decide, “Hey, let's do a Fest.” We'll do it over a weekend in the same month. And in order to get big sponsors, they typically like to donate to a 501(c)(3) or nonprofit or whatever.

SM: You're a charity, essentially.

MF: Exactly. It's a little bit more on the offens[ive] than it was last year, and that's because of what I've learned that, and I believe strongly, needs to end and people need to stand up and say enough is enough. Especially when it comes to children.

SM: And how much money have you raised through the charity, through Hetero Awesomeness Inc.?

MF: Uh, so we basically started launching publicly just a couple weeks ago. I think we're up to $1100.

SM: So tell me a little bit, you know, you've said there's a lot of concerns you have with the so-called movement as I assume you're talking about LGBTQ people. What are your thoughts on gay and lesbian people specifically?

MF: I'm Christian, and so I follow scripture, what God says. Jesus said, “You shouldn't even lust. If you've lusted, you've committed adultery.” So we're all in the same boat. I'm in the same boat. Like sin is sin, sexual sin is sin. And that would be sexuality outside of a committed male-female relationship, marriage. And there's a punishment for that. And you cannot be a being that is a sinful being and be together with a perfect God. So the punishment is death and separation from God forever in Hell. I do love gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the people. I love the people, okay? And I love them enough to tell them that truth because I don't want them to go to Hell.

SM: I'm openly gay, obviously. A lot of people on my team are openly LGBTQ in some way. Do you believe all of us are going to Hell?

MF: So unless you put Jesus Christ there as your Lord and Savior, who sacrificed for your sins—and it has to be, like, truly Jesus Christ. It can't be like a made-up Jesus Christ that suddenly agrees with everything I do and how I live my life. But if Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, and took the penalty for your sins, you put your faith and trust and hope in that, then you're [not] gonna go. You will be entering the kingdom, you won't be going to Hell.

SM: Just to be clear, yes or no, I'm openly gay, am I going to Hell?

MF: Is Jesus your Lord and Savior? 

SM: No.

MF: Okay, then yeah, you're going to Hell.

SM: Okay, no, just interesting. As somebody who's not religious, it's good to get clarification on that. So me, my whole team, we’re going to Hell. Hetero Awesomeness Fest, this has gone kind of viral in national media. You say the event is meant to be a two-day festival that honors the value that this nation was built on. What can we expect if we were to attend Hetero Awesome Fest?

MF: Traditional family values, and they've been deteriorating the last several decades. And what you're gonna see at the fest is a weekend of family-friendly good times, music. There'll be some speakers. There'll be a whole bunch of different booths and businesses there. It's kind of like a Pride fest, but there's just a different type of folks there.

SM: And would gay couples, gay families, trans people, would they be welcome at Hetero Awesome Fest?

MF: Yeah, I always say like in my bar people always ask me, “Would we be welcome in your bar?” Of course. Like, I just don't want any idiots.

SM: What would an example of, I guess, an LGBTQ person acting like an idiot be? 

MF: Somebody like, cross-dressing. If they're cross-dressing and they're showing, you know… If they're just being super, like, “I want attention.”

SM: So are trans people allowed in your bar? Because all trans people, most trans people, presumably, would be cross-dressing [in your eyes].

MF: Uh, so again, as long as they're not acting like an idiot. If I were to walk over to anybody and say, “Hey, can you guys settle down a bit” or whatever. And if they were to pull their phone out and start filming me in my own bar, I'd be like, “This is very odd, idiotic behavior. You need to leave.”

SM: Right. [But] filming you in your own bar versus somebody cross-dressing are two different things. Would a cross-dresser be allowed in your bar?

MF: Yeah, so it's kind of like how we can write volumes and volumes of books on stuff that's idiotic. It's hard to define, you know, and it's—

SM: But hang on, is cross-dressing idiotic? Is that allowed or not? It's just a simple question, I think.

MF: I mean, I don't think it's right. I think it's immoral, but people do immoral things. I don't think if somebody's in my bar and they're cross-dressing and they're acting in a way that's otherwise relatively normal? I don't see that being something that I would kick them out over.

SM: Got you, got you. And you've had other events that have given a free beer to a heterosexual guy who is dressed like a heterosexual guy. I'm just genuinely curious. What is a dude who's dressed like a heterosexual guy? Like, am I doing it right now? Am I?

MF: Yeah, you qualify. I'm just kidding. It's more, I put it in there more as a joke.

SM: What's funny about that to you? What makes it funny? Like, why does that tap into your sense of humor? Because I think a lot of people probably wouldn't think it's funny.

MF: Okay, yeah, so I mean a lot of people do think it's funny, including LGB people. And the point is like, I don’t know. I don’t care if you walk in and you're gay or not gay or straight. It doesn't matter to me. Like as long as you're not acting, like, like an idiot, then you're gonna be fine.

SM: Some people might take issue with the fact that giving discounts to a majority group, or to folks who aren't part of marginalized or oppressed populations through history, is akin to giving discounts to white people and not giving those same discounts to Black people or Latino people. Do you see that as similar?

MF: People can be offended about all kinds of things. It's almost like you open your mouth, somebody's gonna be offended about something. I remember a few years back, I'm in the real estate industry and Coldwell Banker National was offering an incentive to start a branch for Coldwell Banker. And it was like 10 grand. And they described everybody who gets the incentive. And the only person who doesn't get the incentive was a straight white male who's not lying. And it's like, “Okay, so everybody gets this incentive except me” because I'm not gonna lie and pretend to be gay or whatever. And I'm not gay and I'm white and I’m a male. And it's like, hey, that's kind of ridiculous.

SM: What you're tapping into there is essentially the opposite of misogyny or the opposite of homophobia. Do you think there is a lot of heterophobia and sexism against men in society right now?

MF: I mean, we're talking about coming off of some decades of, you know, DEI. Prior to that, you would call it affirmative action. And I have dozens of examples, and myself included, where male whites were definitely not hired. That's just our society. I don't think it's right. I think I believe strongly in a meritocracy, where people should get a job or get whatever they're competing for based off of their merits and their merits alone. Not because of their skin color or who they sleep with in their bedroom.

SM: I know a lot of denominations of Christianity in the U.S. particularly believe in patriarchal governance structures. Do you believe in that?

MF: I believe the best family would be a family where children grow up with their mother and father. This is the best case scenario. And the father would be a strong leader and demonstrate strong leadership. And the mother would be there to help support that leadership. And the father would love the mother so much that he cherishes her. And he would make decisions and lead that family because he loves and cherishes his wife. And that's a beautiful, beautiful, perfect relationship. And together they can love their children the best way.

That's the type of patriarchal type of family that I think would be and is the best.

SM: What denomination of Christianity do you identify with?

MF: Non-denominational, it's just biblical Christianity.

SM: You've said that there's no hate involved in these events and that the festival isn't about targeting any group. But then you've also written on your social media, on your Instagram that, quote, “the LGBTQ agenda is wicked, perverse, and victimizes children.” And you've said that, quote, “Pride Month exists so LGBTQ can march down the street doing,” quote, “disgusting and criminal activities.” What are the activities that you deem to be disgusting and criminal in your eyes?

MF: The thing that they did with that post is that they took out the other person's comments on there. Their comments were that Pride exists so that social rights can be protected and gays won't be victims just simply walking down the street. But that's not what Pride still is. It's gotten very, very wicked. So, in other words, I'm just showing the polarity of it, the other extreme of it. Like, you say, “It's only this,” and you're so innocent and everything else, and I'm saying, “No, part of what you're doing is pushing a transsexual agenda on children.” And so, ultimately, what would my advice be for Pride or whatever? Like, a rebrand where we're not sexualizing children, where we’re not doing all of the things that everybody, or a lot of people in the country that have a higher sense of morality are saying, “Hey, this needs to stop.” Those people have been inactive, they've had their heads down, just kind of working conservative American Christian people, and they haven't engaged in the culture wars basically at all in the last 20 or 30 years. And now as a result, we're looking at some extremism and it's the extremism and victimization of children and where it's heading and people… I'll just stop right there.

SM: So you're saying that there's disgusting and criminal activities. Calling people criminals is a very bold accusation. What evidence do you have to support calling LGBTQ people criminals?

MF: Naked. Nakedness walking down the street.

SM: What else?

MF: Does there need to be anything else?

SM: Then you've seen that with your own eyes.

MF: I've seen plenty of videos of it, yeah.

SM: What else is disgusting, wicked, perverse, and criminal?

MF: So you have these, uh, drag shows in front of children. You know, just the conversation in my opinion is completely wicked [and] trying to lead a child down the path that they may not be the gender or sex that God gave them. That whole thing's wicked. Not, you know, basically trying to create a society where we don't have definitions is also wicked. It's just a wicked thing.

SM: You say that you have concerns about sexualizing children, and there's a huge narrative, especially in kind of right-wing American spaces of LGBTQ people grooming kids, right? But if you look at the statistics, in conservative Christian spaces, pedophilia, incest, rape, abuse is disproportionately higher in religious biblical circles. Why wouldn't you focus your energy on something like that when that is significantly more prevalent than in LGBTQ circles?

MF: It's horrible, it's all horrible, because you're not marching— 

SM: If you're a devout Christian, why not focus there? There's so many Christians who I think are focusing on the LGBTQ people, but the problem is deeply embedded, pervasive, and systematic in Christian circles. Why not focus there?

MF: I'm just not, I'm not gonna fight what you just said. There is a lot of hypocrisy in the Church. I'm very disappointed in the Church and the people that are in the Church. And there's a lot of evil. I mean, a tremendous amount of evil. I would say probably most people in the Church who think they're Christian are probably not saved. They're not true Christians. There's so much evil inside the church. It's wicked, it's horrible. Why am I focusing on this? Well, this is what happened. This is just where I found myself. Five years ago if you asked me, would [I] be like, you know, I'm not gonna say famous, but would [I] be a significant face against an LGBT community? I mean, no. This is the path that God put in front of me when I decided to do Heterosexual Awesomeness month last year.

SM: Obviously, there's an anger toward the “LGBTQ Movement,” as you call it. Take me inside your mind. What makes you angry? What makes you fired up at what you describe as the “LGBTQ Movement?”

MF: Yeah, it's the extreme part of it. So it's gonna be—and it's not an individual—anybody who's willing to talk to me, and I've put out several videos last year, stood outside PrideFest, gave a gift card to whoever had five minutes to chat. And I tell them, they're standing in front of me, and I say, “Look, I want you to know that I love you. I love you as a human, you were created in God's image.” And I give them the Gospel.

SM: How can you say that though? That is so, to me, if I'm being honest, sounds so beyond hypocritical. 

MF: I understand.

SM: You say, “I love you.” How much of that Christian, “I love you, I love you, I love you, you're wicked, you're perverse, you’re criminal.” There is a complete disconnect to those two sentiments.

MF: Because there's a very foundational disagreement on what's moral, and my concern is true for you. Like, and you can say, “Hey, Christianity's crazy, and that guy's crazy and I'm never gonna believe it.” Well, that's fine. But the thing is, a lot of people have a big problem with it, and I think it's because they have a conscience, and the conscience tells them there's something wrong with this. We really want people to gather around us and support us and kind of champion this as being a righteous and good thing. And when somebody doesn't do that, it bothers me because I have a conscience and I know ultimately, God wrote in my DNA that this is not the right thing to do. And it could just be that we totally disagree. So then I would just say, just dismiss me, just say, “That guy's crazy” and move on.

SM: From my perspective, the reason I think it's important to have these conversations and speak to folks who have your perspective is that there are 41% of LGBTQ kids in this country who seriously considered suicide in the last year. And a lot of the reason for that is because there's so much animus. There's so much weaponization of Christianity to hate gay people or to say people are living in sin for this reason. And I just don't really see the productivity of that sentiment when there are so many LGBTQ people in affirming families who are living amazing lives like myself, like my team here at Uncloseted Media. So that confuses me. Do you ever question what you're doing and if it's really helping?

MF: So people are going to be divided on it. Jesus said, “Don't think that I came to bring peace, I actually came to bring division.” And people throw Jesus stuff at me all the time [and say], “You're not like Jesus, you're not like Jesus.” And they just don't know who Jesus is. He is very blunt with people, and He said, “Leave your sin behind.” And that's what He wants.

SM: What would you say, though, to the kid who knows he's gay? There's nothing he can do to change it. And he is feeling suicidal because he's trapped in a hyper-religious community where everyone, pastors, teachers, parents, are saying, “Sin, sin, sin, sin, sin.” What would you say to that kid right now?

MF: My first request would be, “Hey, would you be willing to meet once a week and have a Bible study together?”

SM: For the kid who comes out and says, “I'm suicidal, I think I'm gay,” you would offer Bible study. We've talked to many kids from doing stories and conversion therapy who spent 30 years trying that. Nothing worked. I'm wondering, you mentioned your daughter. What if she came to you and said, “Dad, I've been feeling this way for years and years. I know I'm a lesbian.” What would you do if it was your daughter?

MF: Well, yeah, I mean, same thing. I would pray for her and pray with her and talk a lot through it with her. And I mean, I would still be her dad. Do you have a specific question? I'm not sure. I mean I would still love her and be her dad.

SM: Would you support her and support her having a wife and be there at her wedding? 

MF: No.

SM: Okay, understood. You mentioned that traditional family values are deteriorating. Can you expand on that?

MF: Yeah, so if you look at the percentages of children who grow up with mother and father at home have dropped significantly since 1970. I think it was up near 70% and now it's down near 40. And that means there's a lot of broken families. You don't have that relationship of a loving husband who loves his wife demonstrated for them. And that's led to higher crime rates, pregnancy rates, more abortions, broken families, more crime, all these types of things that we see in our society as we become— 

SM: How has that led to [higher] crime rates?

MF: Well, I mean, I don't have the studies¹ in front of me. I wasn't prepared for that question. But if you look at broken families, the children that don't have a traditional mother and father, they have a higher crime rate for those children.

SM: Which study are you referring to?

MF: I'd have to look it up. I mean, I can send it to you after the interview or something.

SM: As you mentioned at the top, you are a 501(c)(3) charity. What charitable purpose do you guys serve?

MF: So the goal would be to defend and celebrate traditional family values. So we're basically going to create content, and we're building a content creation team, where we will be exposing the people who are the enemies of traditional family values.

SM: Am I an enemy of traditional family values?

MF: So I don't know because I don’t know you.

SM: I run an LGBTQ news publication. I'm gay and I have a boyfriend. Am I an enemy?

MF: I don't know, because I don't know [you]. I'd have to know more. Does that make you an enemy right there? No, I don't think so.

SM: Doesn't that mean I'm threatening traditional family values by actively engaging in a relationship that isn't traditional?

MF: If you were attracting a lot of attention writing pieces about how the traditional family value is not the best and should be destroyed or something like that, this company would direct their attention towards you. But the type of people we're going to be exposing would be people who have supported, whether it's a corporation or company or a political leader, who have supported legislation or who have supported any movements or events or things that do something that would be victimizing children, for example.

SM: There's so much, obviously, tension in America specifically between conservative Christian families who want the traditional values and LGBTQ people. What do you think we can do to bridge the gap?

MF: I think what people are realizing is that there's been decades of massive amounts of funding, tax dollars, corporate dollars, towards a movement where we're now waking up and seeing, hey, this has gone in a very wicked direction. The number one way to get back on track would be to reverse a lot of the stuff that's happened. We've gone too far. I don't know how to define exactly, I haven't put a whole essay together on exactly everything that would need to be backed up.

SM: Trump, in the election cycle, and the GOP spent $215 million on anti-trans ads. Five times more than he spent on ads focused on the economy. And when Americans were asked for a list of the 27 issues they care most about, trans ranked dead last.

For me, as an openly gay man, I look at folks like you and other people who feel the same way as you and think, “Why are you guys so obsessed with us?” Why do you care so much? Why do you put so much time, so much effort, start a charity, start a festival? What's the obsession?

MF: I would say, “Why do you want people to be obsessed with you?” Because the reality is—

SM: We don’t!

MF: But you do. But you want the obsession if it's positive obsession, so you want everybody to come around and—

SM: Don’t straight people want the obsession? They're ingrained in every single pop culture reference in the history of mankind, and gay people have just started to have representations in the last decade. So I think obsession is a little hypocritical.

MF: Well, I mean, I could say the same thing. So it's basic—

SM: Every single representation is heterosexual. It's pervasive through history until about 10 years ago, where, yes, same-sex representations has become mainstream. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

MF: It's representative because the great majority of people are heterosexual. And that's how we procreate and that's how God designed it. So it's not like an obsession. And the reason why Pride movements in the past, I'm sorry, straight Pride movements in the past or parades or whatever have fizzled out and become nothing is because it's like, it's normal, right? But the reality is we're getting to a couple of years here where people are like, “This has gone crazy. So the opposite thing over here, I want to pay attention to this opposite thing and support it because this has gotten way too far.” Meaning LGBTQ Pride has gone way too. “Enough is enough” is like the thing that I hear from people who come into the bar and say, “Thank you so much for standing for this and standing for that and everything that you're doing, because enough is enough.”

SM: The mini fame you've received, do you like that?

MF: I like it only in that I'm committed to speaking truth and everything that I do in my life, I just wanna glorify God. Am I gonna be perfect at doing that? No, but if He can speak through me and I can tell your audience the truth about the good news. I wanna be as famous as possible, if that's the case. In other words, the bigger the audience that I can talk to and give that message to, the better. I can understand when people call me a hater, I can. I can grasp that. But I do love them. I really do. I love you. I mean, I love this conversation. I don't really know if that's an adequate way of explaining it all, but I just feel like I am going to do what God wants me to do and I'm not afraid of anything.

SM: Couldn't you just glorify God by like feeding the homeless though, instead of attacking the LGBTQ community?

MF: I'm happy to do that, but then...

SM: I'm just throwing it out there that might be a better…

MF: Right. But then we wouldn't be having this conversation. And I think this conversation could end up with a lot of people having big, other conversations all over the place. If you think it's crazy and gays are totally fine and they're not going to Hell, fine. Just converse about the children's stuff. Like, can we all just agree about the children's and back the heck up on that?

SM: Well, we can go back to the children's stuff that needs to be addressed inside the Church, but we won't go tit for tat on that. 

MF: I agree.

SM: Look, Mark, Mark Fitzpatrick, the creator of Hetero Awesomeness Fest in Boise, Idaho. I really appreciate you coming on today to talk with me and Uncloseted Media. I think these conversations are important, whether or not we agree on everything. So thank you.

MF: Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.

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1. After this interview, Uncloseted Media followed up with Fitzpatrick about the study he was referencing. While Fitzpatrick couldn’t point to a specific study, he does remember learning about this from “sociology classes in college” and sent an article from City Journal, a magazine published by the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. The article says that a “stable, married family still gives children a leg up in life.”

To make its case, the City Journal article references a study published in The Future of Children, in which the authors mention a previous study that determined “children raised in single-parent families didn’t fare as well as those raised in two-parent families [and] that the rise of single parenthood was contributing to higher rates of poverty.” However, this previous study also found that “children raised by same-sex couples fared no better or worse than those raised by opposite-sex parents.” The Future of Children study goes on to reference a 2015 study concluding that “same-sex couples are as good at parenting as their different-sex counterparts.”

Another study mentioned by the Journal article found that parental separation does have, on average, a negative impact on children’s education outcomes. But when divorce took place in a family with high levels of conflict, children experienced relief. This study makes no mention of outcomes for children raised by LGBTQ parents.