In 2004 the city
council of Casper, Wyo.—Matthew Shepard’s
hometown—unanimously elected their first openly gay
mayor.
Guy Padgett, who
at 27 was also the town’s youngest mayor ever, says
he “never wanted my sexuality to be the focal
point. It’s part of who I am. If anybody had
doubts at the beginning of the year, by the end they were
convinced that sexuality was not a characteristic that
inhibits being a good public servant or a facilitator
to a council of nine people.”
Nonetheless,
Padgett is well aware of the significance of sexuality. He
and Matthew Shepard were friends in junior high school, and
the two had reconnected shortly before
Shepard’s death in 1998.
“We would
go out to coffee,” remembers Padgett. “He
would tell me these fantastic stories about
Switzerland and Saudi Arabia; I was always a little
bit jealous, honestly. I regret we didn’t have more
time.”
Wyoming entered
the spotlight again in late 2005 with the release of
Brokeback Mountain, and Padgett became a go-to
gay for the media.
“A lot of
times, the press would come to me for my opinion,”
says Padgett, adding that as mayor he had to weigh in
on a lot more than a gay cowboy film.
“I’d get all sorts of calls on all sorts of
issues, from barking dogs to potholes. The interest in
me as a gay man has come from outside the community
rather than within.”
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