Word: padgett
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Padgett, Dee Gill and Michael Peltier
Sometimes it's impossible to tell whether Wyoming gays feel safe or scared, whether they believe they are full citizens of the state or strangers within it. Although it is easy to get caught up in Padgett's act of self-revelation or in Francis' romantic childhood notions about Wyoming's big spirit, many gay people here are deeply ambivalent about their state. They often talk about its beauty--about the unbound, wide-open spaces that make liberty seem within one's grasp. But many haven't quite found freedom...
...telling forces lesbian and gay Wyomingites to lie, or at least to omit details in everyday conversation. When Padgett decided to run for city council last year, he complied with the rules, sort of. To extend a metaphor, he resided in the closet but kept its door ajar. He was living in the same house as his partner, Jason Marsden, 31, and he gave that address as his campaign headquarters. Marsden, executive director of a conservation group, came out in a Casper Star-Tribune op-ed shortly after the Shepard murder, so everyone knew he was gay. "Honestly, if anyone...
After he was elected, Padgett was careful to remove his commitment ring before council meetings. He is sure that some of his colleagues and most of his constituents don't know he's gay. When he, Marsden and I first met, they asked me not to reveal Padgett's name in this article. Marsden kept a butcher knife next to his bed in the days after Shepard was killed, and he didn't want to live in fear again. "I don't know if the doors and windows and locks are strong enough for us to want to expose ourselves...
...Padgett spent a mostly sleepless night reconsidering his decision. He knew that Judy Shepard, Matt's mother, went around the country saying nothing will change until "everybody comes out and stays out," as she puts it. And here he was, someone who had known her son--and had seen her tears--and he was hiding. "Let's do it," he told me, adding later, "Now that we've had five years to grieve, it's time to make some positive changes." What about the butcher knife? "I felt silly about that anyway, even at the time," says Marsden. Nonetheless...