The Fourth annual Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund Women’s Pride brunch, held the morning of Saturday, July 31, at Margarita’s before the annual Pride parade, drew nearly 100 people in support of the Victory Fund, a national organization whose central mission is to increase the number of outstanding openly GLBT public officials. The brunch featured keynote speaker Nicole LeFayour, a candidate for Idaho State Assembly. LeFayour, who recently won the primary election, will become the first out GLBT elected official in Idaho history if she wins in the November general election.

“I think that many people in the race supported my opponent because they felt that a lesbian couldn’t win in my district and we would lose the seat in the fall,” LeFayour said. “And those kinds of attitudes and those kinds of fears are the kinds of things that make it very hard for gays and lesbians to run….”

LeFayour, who has lived in the district she seeks to represent in the Assembly for 14 years, has worked extensively on GLBT and environmental issues. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley, LeFayour said she relocated to Idaho partially because of all of the work on GLBT issues that needed to be done there. She has worked in the nonprofit sector, organizing GLBT community members and teaching them how to educate legislators on GLBT issues.

“We would make conservative and moderate, Democratic and Republican legislators understand what it is like to be one of us – being queer in a state like Idaho,” LeFayour continued. “… I knocked on 3,000 doors [while campaigning in Idaho]. After having been ‘that gay activist’…I was little worried that I wasn’t going to be that popular when I got to their doorsteps. … It was actually really moving. People were warm, kind and welcoming. What do I take from that? That our nation is changing. More and more people are realizing that they know gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.”

Idaho is a state that, until recently, had no hate crimes legislation, and one in which only two small towns have domestic partner benefits for city employees, LeFayour said. Until the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Lawrence v. Texas struck down sodomy laws across the nation last year, Idaho’s penalty was five years to life in prison for anal sex between consenting adults.

In 1994, an anti-gay ballot initiative was defeated in Idaho by 300 votes. “That was the year that people started coming out in Idaho,” LeFayour explained. “…That has had a profound effect on our state.”

She added that television programs that feature GLBT characters and the exposure the same-sex marriage debate is given in the national media have helped normalize images of GLBTs in the state.

“In those small towns where people are afraid to come out, somewhere there is a television, and on that television is a positive image of a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person; especially gays and lesbians,” LeFayour said. “…This is so important in rural parts of our country, where we can still lose our jobs, our families and still get bashed for crossing gender lines at night.”

Gender identity issues are the least understood by the nation as a whole, LeFayour said in closing. “A lot of us struggle around gender as much as around sexual orientation,” she said. “Something that our nation needs to understand and that we’re all going to have to help them with is that we all live somewhere on the gender continuum.”

Assemblymember Christine Kehoe, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and Deputy Mayor Toni Atkins were among those who attended the brunch.

This year’s Victory Fund brunch had the largest turnout ever, said Pam Wilson, who coordinates the brunch every year.