State Rep. Nicole LeFavour might be my hero

The Idaho Statesman was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize! For its "tenacious coverage of the twists and turns in the scandal involving the state's senator, Larry Craig"! I have just spent about an hour and a half of my life catching up on that tenacious coverage, and though it really hammers the point home that most mainstream journalism is written at a second grader's reading level, I'm still kind of proud of my hometown paper. Anyway: reporter Dan Popkey brought the story to the national stage (though there had been unfounded rumors in the blog world and elsewhere for at least twenty years) and then garnered a lot of acclaim for his continuing coverage, which includes a well-intentioned if choppy, clammy, and ridiculously subheaded feature article that seeks to contextualize gay life in the 1950s and 60s Idaho as a means of trying to sympathize (?) with Craig's covert gayness. (Here it is. Or for a more . . . gripping account read this book instead.) Which is a profoundly depressing topic, by the way, due not entirely to the difficult plight of gays and lesbians at that time, but also because people in Idaho are clearly still freaked out by gays. Just take a look at the comments on the newspaper's website (here for reactions to Popkey's expose, here for the Pulitzer news, and here for the said feature article).

It was a combination of these reiterations (of both Idaho's homophobia and the continuing struggles of gays and lesbians there) that made me fall temporarily in love with Idaho State Representative Nicole LeFavour, who is the state's first openly gay lawmaker.
When the results of a recent poll state that 44 percent of Idahoans think that "homosexuality should be discouraged," one realizes that LaFavour's accomplishment is nothing minor. I don't mean to get preachy, but it's easy to forget how important people like her are.