page_title: Add The Words, Idaho
hierarchical_section_title: Add The Words, Idaho
caption_attribution_description: English: A bail benefit held at the Visual Arts Collective for those arrested (only some of whom are here on stage) during the Add The Four Words Idaho campaign; some $4,000 was raised.
context_page_description: Add The Words, Idaho is an LGBTQ2A activist group and political action committee in the United States, extant since 2010, which advocates adding the words "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the state's human rights act; this group grew out of several others which had been advocating the same. After ten years, however, Add The Words activist have been unable to achieve even one state-wide protection for LGBTQ2A Idahoans. An associated all-volunteer direct action group, Add The 4 Words Idaho, under the leadership of former state senator Nicole LeFavour, undertook a series of civil disobedience protests beginning on February 3, 2014 at the Statehouse.
  Under the leadership of the Add the 4 Words group, 44 people were arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing, having blocked the Idaho Senate's entrances for more than two hours in a silent protest two months in the planning. Three of those arrested were juveniles, and LeFavour herself was, unexpectedly, the last person to be arrested after the Idaho Senate voted to suspend its rule which allows former members to be on the Senate floor.
context_section_description: Add The Words, Idaho is an LGBTQ2A activist group and political action committee (PAC) in the United States, extant since 2010, which advocates adding the words "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the state's human rights act; this group grew out of several others which had been advocating the same. After ten years, however, Add The Words activist have been unable to achieve even one state-wide protection for LGBTQ2A Idahoans. An associated all-volunteer direct action group, Add The 4 Words Idaho, under the leadership of former state senator Nicole LeFavour, undertook a series of civil disobedience protests beginning on February 3, 2014 at the Statehouse.  (The PAC and the direct action group are commonly conflated as Add The Words. This article covers the series of peaceful direct actions/protests, the associated peaceful demonstrations, and the resultant printing and hearing of HB 002, which ultimately died in committee.)
  Under the leadership of the Add the 4 Words group, 44 people were arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing, having blocked the Idaho Senate's entrances for more than two hours in a silent protest two months in the planning. Three of those arrested were juveniles, and LeFavour herself was, unexpectedly, the last person to be arrested after the Idaho Senate voted to suspend its rule which allows former members to be on the Senate floor.
  Add The 4 Words Idaho announced in a press release that "We are here to insist the Idaho Legislature finally add four words, 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity,' to Idaho's Human Rights Act to prevent the suicides, beatings, loss of jobs, evictions and the fear that too many gay and transgender Idahoans live with every day. We do this for those who live in fear and those who may despair this year if no one speaks for them.... Gay and transgender Idahoans have tried every means to get the Legislature to consider the ‘Add the Words’ legislation. If the Legislature again chooses to ignore us and not hear or vote on the bill, we are prepared to peacefully remain here to bring attention to the issue and the Legislature's failure to protect those in our community from harm."
  A second demonstration of at least 65 people was held February 13; no arrests were made, inasmuch as the protestors silently surrounded the Statehouse rotunda after being refused entry into the Senate and House galleries (where political demonstrations are not allowed, including the wearing of t-shirts with political slogans).
  A third demonstration of roughly 200 people was held at the Statehouse on February 17, filling multiple rotunda floors. No arrests were made as it was a mass non-arrest demonstration; the activists mingled freely with representatives from Idaho's livestock industry and schoolchildren promoting school choice.
  At a fourth protest, held on February 20, thirty-two protesters were arrested, and at a fourth, held on February 27, forty-six. By the end of February 2014, 122 arrests had been made (with some protestors having been arrested than once, and all of whom are being represented pro bono), and negotiations between LGBTQ2A-rights advocates and religiously conservative legislators had tentatively begun.
  On March 4, 23 arrests at a fifth protest were made when demonstrators blocked public and private entrances to Gov. "Butch" Otter's office. Former State Senator Nicole LeFavour (arrested four times in five weeks) remarked the protesters were particularly concerned about the lack of discrimination statutes on gay teens in the state, given that a Pocatello, Idaho homosexual teenager had recently committed suicide after being bullied at school, whereas Gov. Otter expressed concern, given the continuing nature of the protests, that the targeted closing of the legislative session (which takes $30,000 a day to operate) for March 21 may be delayed, and the Idaho State Police, which patrols the Statehouse but which perforce has had to pull several highway patrol officers from their usual duties in surrounding counties in order to perform the mass arrests, estimates that 
caption: Nicole LeFavour, speaking at a bail benefit held at the Visual Arts Collective, presents a few of the activists who had been arrested
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