Wyoming's dark cloud of bigotry

Members of Cheyenne Central’s Gay-Straight Alliance recently met with state senator Lynn Hutchings to advocate for an anti-discrimination proposal. Instead of the respect constituents deserve from elected officials, these young people were greeted with a foul expression of hatred.

According to a complaint filed by Wyoming Equality, Senator Hutchings told the young audience, “If my sexual orientation was to have sex with all of the men in there and I had sex with all of the women in there and then they brought their children and I had sex with all of them and then brought their dogs in and I had sex with them, should I be protected for my sexual orientation?”

Hutchings called that “an attempt at a meaningful dialogue.” Others call it a reason for her to resign. Little good that would do. Her odious views square with the Republican Party under the tight-fisted control of a chairman who founded the thankfully-deceased WyWatch, the most intolerant extremist group in Wyoming since the last days of the KKK’s presence in the Equality State.

Certainly she’s not fit to be a public servant. But, she didn’t elect herself. Only the voters of Senate District 5 can atone for their tainted decision. Beyond that, many of her legislative colleagues share her dogma. They endorsed her conduct by rejecting rules protecting the LGBTQ community from harassment perpetrated by lawmakers.

Forcing one of the legislature’s homophobes to resign would be like dredging a bucket of water from the ocean in an effort to drain it.

From the time the students who Ms. Hutchings accosted were in elementary school, they were misled, taught that Wyoming is the Equality State. They learned Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote and that Wyoming elected the first woman governor in the nation.

Those things are the truth but not the whole truth. These kids learned something closer to the whole truth in their unpleasant encounter with their state senator, a hard but important lesson, learned at an early age. These young men and women now know what the Equality State is really like for cultural, racial, and religious minorities.

Anger about this incident turns to sadness when you recognize that dark cloud hanging over Wyoming. For some, it’s a cloud of hopelessness. That cloud was there from the start, hanging low, casting shadows in the shape of bigotry.

Senator Hutchings wasn’t the first. She isn’t even the worst. There were others like her before her. Those who pioneered her mindset destroyed Native American culture on the Great Plains. They lynched Wyoming blacks at a per capita rate exceeding that of Mississippi, massacred Chinese workers in Rock Springs, and attacked Jehovah’s Witnesses in Rawlins.

They attempted a McCarthy-era purge of textbooks at the University of Wyoming and imprisoned Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain. Without people who thought like Ms. Hutchings, wicked politicians could never have blackmailed Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt into committing suicide.

They carried confederate flags into War Memorial Stadium to taunt fourteen black football players the day after an intolerant coach terminated their education because they asked to protest the then-racist policies of the LDS Church. They murdered Matt Shepard and then tried to erase the crime by revising the history of that atrocity.

They continue propagating prejudice, seeking to build a prison to inhumanely warehouse hundreds of undocumented persons whose only crime is seeking better lives for their children. They are proud Wyoming is one of four states refusing to pass hate-crimes laws, satisfied theirs is the only state in the union unwilling to enter into a refugee resettlement agreement with the U.S. Government.

They smile and nod their heads as Donald Trump says there are “good people on both sides.” They continue working to make sure that whatever seeds of tolerance and love are scattered elsewhere, they will not find fertile soil here.

That cloud grows ever darker as many Wyomingites stare blankly at the sky and say, “Well, we do need the rain.”

Churches can make their choices but the constitution doesn’t leave anyone a second-class citizen.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who relishes his role as a self-appointed judicial defender of bigotry, waved a white flag dissenting from one recent gay marriage decision. "In sum,” he said, “that Court which finds it so horrific that Congress irrationally and hatefully robbed same-sex couples of the 'personhood and dignity' which state legislatures conferred upon them, will of a certitude be similarly appalled by state legislatures' irrational and hateful failure to acknowledge that 'personhood and dignity' in the first place. As far as this Court is concerned, no one should be fooled; it is just a matter of listening and waiting for the other shoe."

Only a day apart, Scalia opined that the states could deny federal protection to prevent voter suppression while voting to deny states the right to legislate marriage equality. He reminds us of when one of President Nixon’s appointees to the Supreme Court was deemed “mediocre.” Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska famously said the mediocre “are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?”

Scalia would suggest that even the bigots “are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?”

Even Scalia recognizes these rulings were admonitory. States have been warned. Legislators can either do what the constitution requires or the courts will do it for them. The decisions were victories for state’s rights but ultimately, the high court sent a warning shot across their bow. If the states don’t do it, the federal courts will have no choice but to guarantee homosexuals equal protection under the law.

In the case determining the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to be nothing but a defense of bigotry, United States v. Windsor, the majority decided, “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.” Weighing Leviticus against the Constitutional guarantee of equality, five of the nine justices said the latter, “must at the very least mean that a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot justify disparate treatment of that group.”

Using that criterion, civil contracts are as unacceptable as the status quo. Civil contracts are to marriage equality what “separate but equal” was to the battle for the rights of African Americans. “Whites only” drinking fountains are no different than “heterosexual only” weddings. Churches can make their choices but the constitution doesn’t leave anyone a second-class citizen.

The case overturning the California ban on gay marriage sent the strongest signal of what lies ahead for politicians who read their Bible but not our Constitution. Justice Roberts said the proponents of California’s Proposition 8 had suffered only a “generalized grievance” when the ballot initiative they sponsored was struck down.

Those words, “generalized grievance,” relegated to the waste bin the arguments heard ad infinitum from opponents of equality. Those like state senator Leslie Nutting of Cheyenne, who claim the rights of same-sex couples somehow violates “the sanctity of marriage,” or WyWatch and state representative Lynn Hutchings’ claims that gay marriage threatens heterosexual marriage, that marriage is about the ability to reproduce, or the arguments that gay couples shouldn’t raise children…and other unsubstantiated claims…the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said those arguments were all “generalized” grievances, not giving adherents the right to come into a court to challenge people seeking equal protection under the law.

Note to Nutting and Hutchings: Chief Justice Roberts wrote, in another case striking down a school integration program, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Ergo, the way to stop discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is to stop discriminating on the basis of sexual discrimination.

The thud you heard when Justice Roberts finished speaking was indeed the other shoe dropping.

Wyoming legislators can choose between prejudice and the Constitution. Don’t hold your breath. Time and resources used to work for equal rights in the Equality State would be better spent taking the case to the federal court.

The time has come and even Justice Scalia knows it.