The "Hate State" Myth

In Wyoming, there are a few bigots who don't like gays. In the media, there are a lot more bigots who don't like Wyoming.

Robert O. Blanchard from the May 1999 issue

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In addition to the question of whether a hate crime epidemic actually exists is the issue of whether hate crime legislation would do anything about the situation. While the media uncritically articulated such an assumption, it's no more proven than the existence of the epidemic in the first place. In a New York Times op-ed piece, Jacobs said he was certain that the alleged perpetrators in Wyoming, like those who a few months before had murdered James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, were not "invited to their crimes" because of their states' criminal codes. In fact, all face capital murder charges and the death penalty (which has already been ordered against the first defendant in the Byrd case). "Yet well-meaning and misguided politicians and gay activists say the tragedy demonstrates a need for more state and federal `hate crime' laws," he wrote. "It is hard to see the current outcry as anything more than another chance for politicians to go out on a limb and declare themselves against hate and prejudice."

One could argue that hate crime laws have far more pernicious effects than simply allowing politicians to display false courage. Andrew Sullivan in Virtually Normal (1995) contends that hate crime laws are not only generally ineffective, they function as political decoys or placebos, actually maintaining the status quo of gay inequality. Fundamental, government-enforced discrimination against gays--including prohibitions against military service and same-sex marriage--is obscured by such laws, he argues.

Drawing a page from some death penalty advocates, supporters of hate crime laws typically contend that such legislation, whether or not it affects crime, sends the "message" that society won't stand for certain types of behavior. But individuals interpret messages differently; often they do so in ways unintended by the sender. While to some a hate crime law is a marker of a tolerant, enlightened community, to others it establishes grotesque hierarchies of victims. Such a move is inherently divisive, as it implicitly places more value on some lives; it also provides ammunition to anti-gay activists who accuse gays of seeking "special rights."

Such concerns were clearly at work in Wyoming residents' outrage regarding the disparity between the coverage of Matthew Shepard's murders and similarly ugly crimes. They were in no way rationalizing or minimizing Shepard's murder. Rather, they were expressing discomfort with the idea that one life is inherently more valuable than another. In fact, after Shepard's death, when the Laramie City Council was considering a hate crime ordinance, the mother of the 8-year-old girl who had been murdered earlier in the year opposed it, claiming it would create an "emotional split" among relatives of crime victims.

What? No Gay Bars?

With its lack of interest in local knowledge, the national media misinterpreted such reactions as further evidence of regional homophobia, a conclusion perhaps buttressed by the superficial sameness of Wyoming's population: According to official census numbers, it's 92 percent white, 5.7 percent Hispanic, less than 1 percent each African American, Asian American, and Native American. Journalists ominously reported that "Wyoming has no gay bars," a fact that becomes less compelling when one realizes that the state has no decent shopping malls, either: The paucity of both reflects economic realities, not political or cultural judgments.

If anything, a live-and-let-live culture has emerged from "high altitudes and low multitudes," to quote Wyoming politicians' favorite cliché. For instance, gays and straights alike frequent The Fireside Inn, the bar at which Shepard met his alleged killers. For a small population (453,388 in 1990, lower than any other state's) that occupies a space larger than the United Kingdom and averages fewer than five persons per square mile, the distances are too great, the people too few and interdependent, the economy too underdeveloped, and the sense of community too strong to accommodate the separatism that identity politics demands. In such a land of pragmatic tolerance, distinctions like that always will be unpopular.

That is particularly true when such distinctions are created and enforced by the government. Skepticism and resentment about government is widespread in a state in which 45 percent of open space is still owned by the feds and managed--arbitrarily, it is frequently charged--by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Dissatisfaction with land use policies is one reason why Wyoming has for years been an enthusiastic participant in the "sagebrush rebellion," the populist intermountain state initiative to curb the Bureau of Land Management's power over public lands within their states.

But skepticism about government does not equal intolerance, as Wyoming's trail-blazing history on women's rights and other social issues suggests. If anything, it equals an embrace of quirky individualism. Wyoming's quintessential and highly popular politician is former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, who wrote in his 1997 autobiography, Right in the Old Gazoo, "I have flunked damn near every litmus test that was ever administered in politics. I am a conservative--but not as far as the Christian Coalition is concerned, because I am pro-choice [and gay friendly]. I think of myself as an environmentalist, because I worked hard on conservation issues. And yet I am a true believer in the multiple use of the public lands, something the real tree huggers will never support."

In 1998, the Wyoming Republican Party--which dominates the state politically--put out a 50-point platform that contained none of the usual Christian Coalition boilerplate anti-gay initiatives inserted in many state GOP platforms. In fact, only one of the party's 79 less-important resolutions commented on homosexuality, affirming that gays, lesbians, "and those engaged in alternate lifestyles have the basic rights and protections of American citizens...but...no special rights or privileges [should] be granted to them."

While the rhetoric about "special rights" is vintage Christian Coalition, it is buried in a cluttered menu of mostly trivial resolutions, a faint echo of the usual fire-and-brimstone fare. That is as about intolerant as even Republicans get in Wyoming.

The Road from Laramie

So what does Wyoming's live-and-let-live culture actually look like? On the last day of my December visit, I drove 40 miles west to Cheyenne to meet and interview Jim Corrigan, an officer of the United Gays and Lesbians of Wyoming. According to its Web site, the group formed in 1997 because gays "were sick of having nothing to do other than go down to Colorado for a little fun." It now hosts an annual August "rendezvous" in the Laramie Mountain range that attracts more than 300 mostly gay campers from throughout the region. It also has a Thanksgiving pot-luck dinner and a major winter casino event called "Lovers and Gamblers."

I arrived early at Corrigan's house in a pleasant northwest Cheyenne neighborhood, across the street from an elementary school where my mother had taught in the 1950s. Jeff Lowe, Corrigan's lover, greeted me at the door. He apologized on behalf of Corrigan, who was working late. Jeff said he would try to answer my questions.

As he played a video game with one of his three children, we traded coming-out stories that reflected similar complex experiences of denial, marriage, children, "coming to terms," and divorce. He told me the divorce court granted him custody of his children. After he met Corrigan, Jeff said, they bought the house to settle down and raise the children in Cheyenne. I asked him how neighbors, school officials, and people in general were treating him and his family.