The Good And The Bad.

First the bad news because you probably already heard the good news.

When you move to your dream location and it turns out to be hell, that’s when you find out who your friends are.

'Your kind is not welcome': Homophobic confrontation sparks debate in Wyoming
A bigoted incident in the rural northwest part of the state has prompted others in the community to stand up and say, “Enough.”
NBC News
By The Associated Press
December 7, 2020


WAPITI, Wyo. — When she heard a knock on the door, Colin Monahan figured it had to be about the new garage.

Monahan and her wife, Shannon Lastowski Monahan, had just finished dinner. Their guests had all departed, leaving the couple alone at their log home well off the main road in the rural community of Wapiti, a village of a few hundred in northwest Wyoming. Colin had just finished installing a new, prefabricated garage on their property, painted in a shade of brown to complement the waving grasses of the surrounding valley.

Donning their masks and opening the door, the couple were greeted by five people standing on their porch, there to discuss a “neighborhood issue” — presumably, Colin thought, the garage.

But it wasn’t a garage problem…

Looking over the group, the Monahans — a same-sex couple originally from the Chicago area — recognized a familiar face, a man who the couple said had previously harassed them on social media. Both Colin and Shannon, residents of the subdivision four years now, quickly came to realize that the conversation was never about a garage, and was never intended to be.

It was about Colin, who dresses masculine but, in her own words, could be seen as either male or female. She goes by “Colleen” as often as she does “Colin.”

“One of the women said to us, ‘Your kind is not welcome here. You are not welcome in Cody Country and you need to leave,’” Shannon recalled in an interview shortly after the October incident. “She told Colin, ‘You pretend to be a man, and you need to leave.’”

What would you do when a bunch of neighbors tell you to leave, you’re not welcome here.

My neighbors were indifferent when I came out, the same for the old New Hampshire cottage, and the Cape Cod cottage… well what do you expect? It’s twenty minutes from P’town. But Wyoming? That is heart of Trump country.

However even there, there is support for us.

Some businesses made clear their support for the LGBTQ community. Sunlight Sports, a sporting goods store on Cody’s main strip, declared on its social media pages that bigots were not welcome inside.

The owners, Wes and Melissa Allen, stressed that they believed that 99 percent of county residents are good people. But they had an unblinking message for the rest.

“If you hate your neighbors so much for who they are — who they love, the color of their skin, where they were born, where they worship, or any of the other things that make up that person — that you need to treat them differently or harass them or make them feel unsafe in their own home, don’t come into our business,” they wrote.

Other businesses began stocking merchandise in solidarity with the couple, producing stickers and buttons with rainbow flags and slogans supportive of the LGBTQ community. But that, in turn, touched off a wave of bigotry on social media, directed at the couple as well as others who publicly supported them. On one local Facebook group, a man described the couple as “liberal socialist democratic homosexual transvestites from Chicago” who “hate this country.” Suggestions of the need for a hate crime bill were described in a letter to the local newspaper as “dangerous” and “Orwellian,” while others cast doubt that the incident happened at all.

However when comes to us, there is a deep divide between the haters who hate anyone who is different from themselves and our supporters.

Isolated among a few individuals or not, that response was seen by some as a symptom of a rage brewing among a vocal minority of Park County during a time of dramatic change. But that bigotry also prompted others in the community to stand up and say, “Enough.”

And it turns out that the old timers are accepting but the new comers are bring their hate with them when they are moving to Wyoming, they see the state as a “Red Neck” haven.

Cody Mayor Matt Hall said the first tinges of such a change were felt with the arrival of rapper Kanye West last year. That feeling, the Cody native says, has been amplified by conservative-leaning newcomers in the last few years who believed they would find a city of like-minded people waiting for them upon their arrival. New businesses in town are attracting new residents as well, changing the fabric of the community.

I also think that this is one of the problems…

Colin Monahan and Shannon Lastowski Monahan shared their story, and the community stood up to respond. They just hope that the risk they took was not made in vain, and that their experience — a couple singled out for who they love — underscores the need for a greater level of protection for people like them.

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You all probably have seen this in the news,

Supreme Court hands victory to transgender students in locker room case
The court declined to take up a case brought by a group of parents who didn't want their kids using the same facilities as trans kids.
LGBTQ Nation
By Bil Browning
December 7, 2020


The Supreme Court has declined to take up a case brought by Oregon parents who want to exclude transgender students from school locker rooms and restrooms. The parents demanded that trans students only use facilities that correspond with their sex at birth and not the gender with which they identify.

The court did not give a reason for turning away the appeal, but similar lawsuits have been dismissed by lower courts across the country. The decision to decline the case is a big win for transgender students.

No other details were giving by the Supreme Court as to why or who want to refuse to hear the case are available.

So what did the lower court rule last February?

To answer that question I googled the case.

SCOTUS Refuses to Overturn Ruling That Allowed Students to Use the Bathroom Aligned with Gender Identity
Law & Crime
By Jerry Lambe
December 7th, 2020


[…]
The case, Parents for Privacy v. William P. Barr, stems from a 2017 lawsuit filed after the Dallas School District No. 2 put in place the anti-discrimination bathroom and locker room policies. Portland-based U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez dismissed the action in 2018, leading the parents to file an appeal with the Ninth Circuit.

A three-judge panel on the circuit court affirmed Hernandez’s ruling in February, concluding that the Fourteenth Amendment did not provide viable privacy claims for either parents or students to challenge the policy.

“We agree with the district court and hold that there is no Fourteenth Amendment fundamental privacy right to avoid all risk of intimate exposure to or by a transgender person who was assigned the opposite biological sex at birth,” Judge A. Wallace Tashima wrote in a 55-page opinion that SCOTUS chose not to review.

“We also hold that a policy that treats all students equally does not discriminate based on sex in violation of Title IX, and that the normal use of privacy facilities does not constitute actionable sexual harassment under Title IX just because a person is transgender. We hold further that the Fourteenth Amendment does not provide a fundamental parental right to determine the bathroom policies of the public schools to which parents may send their children, either independent of the parental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it. Finally, we hold that the school district’s policy is rationally related to a legitimate state purpose, and does not infringe Plaintiffs’ First Amendment free exercise rights because it does not target religious conduct.”

So this leads to the Fourteenth Amendment, very interesting! If you remember marriage equality was based on the Fourteenth Amendment and it also indicates that the Supreme Court justices are still thinking along those lines.

While the justices have not yet agreed to hear a case directly related to transgender bathroom policies, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit earlier this year cited to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s landmark opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County in holding that that public schools cannot prohibit transgender students from using the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.


In Bostock, the court stated that it was “impossible” to discriminate against a transgender individual without taking that person’s sex into account, a rationale that was mirrored by the appellate court’s August ruling.

So maybe there is hope for us in the Supreme Court, just maybe the court will look at discrimination cases as Fourteenth Amendment cases.