Idaho is trending towards being a state that prefers “camps”. Camps that simplify people into groups of beliefs such as politics, religion, and sexual orientation. Where once we were all neighbors, now we tend to first ask which camps someone belongs to before we agree to treat them with mutual respect.
But what of the Idahoans who don’t fit neatly into a single-word box of beliefs? More intriguing yet, what are we to think of those who span several (seemingly contradictory) camps?
After we finished recording our last episode “Iconic Foods of Boise” with Amos Rothstein, we veered into a different conversation and decided to turn the microphones back on to capture what it’s like for him to be a heavily invested member of the Republican party of Idaho, and Jewish, AND being gay. Amos also talks about his penpal relationship with the late Bob Dole, and how it ushered him into working so closely with the Republican party. Shane and Natalie speak candidly about their discomfort with accepting imposed cultural belief constructs and how that has been received.