Mar 23, 2007  |  By: KATHERINE VOLIN  | COMMENTS     

“People think Matthew Shepard and ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ We’re not intolerant.”

Judy Shepard, Matthew Shepard’s mother and the executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which has offices in Casper, Wyo., near where she grew up, agrees that the state isn’t an outlier in terms of intolerance.

“I think the perception is that Wyoming is more homophobic than most states because of what happened to Matthew,” Shepard wrote in an e-mail. Matthew Shepard was killed in a hate crime in Laramie, Wyo., in 1998. “It is a misguided assumption. Wyoming is neither more nor less homophobic. However, in terms of recognizing that gays are repeatedly denied their basic civil rights every day is a concept beyond the majority of current legislators.”

The politics of Wyoming conservatism, Zwonitzer says, are more of a traditional conservatism than the intense religious and social conservatism that one might find in southern states.

“In Wyoming and the other Rocky Mountain states, I’d say we’re almost kind of anti-government,” he says. “We resist that heavily — government [regulation of daily life.]”

Shepard disagrees with Zwonitzer’s view of Wyoming politics.

“I think he is part of a younger generation that thinks that way about Wyoming and the country as a whole — that things are not as socially conservative as they once were,” Shepard says. “I’m part of a generation that by and large is more socially conservative than his and unfortunately, we are still the majority in Wyoming.” 

Zwonitzer, a fifth-generation Wyomingite, says he became more conscious of the needs for civil rights for gays during his four years at Georgetown, where he was friends with several gay students.

“I guess I really began to understand their struggle and the struggle of the gay population to get basic rights,” Zwonitzer says. “It’s not special rights, it’s just equal rights. I guess it really was the politics of the East that broadened my horizons. Hopefully, I brought that back to Wyoming and expanded our horizons back here.”

He’s served as a state legislator for two years but Zwonitzer says if presented with the opportunity, he’d be open to serving in a higher political office.

“I think I have the support here, but there are some conservative parts of the state that I would have some trouble with,” Zwonitzer says. “Things change over time, but we’ll see what happens.”