The New York Times has gone out and found a few real, live gay cowboys in Wyoming and has painted the same old story: these are real men, normal men, rodeo men. There might be lots of them. But, of course, the rough-and-tumble homophobes in Wyoming repress such natural and healthy yearnings.
A disgusting reporting job, but here's the link, if you want it. Excerpt:
Mr. Clark [a homosexual] was not be the only person in Wyoming who pointed out the prevalence in local Internet gay chat rooms of men who are not "queers" but who constitute a population of "men who have sex with men but do not identify as gay," a designation arrived at by epidemiologists struggling with ways to track the vectors of sexually transmitted disease.
"There is probably a fair amount of that going on," said Joe Corrigan, a quiet-spoken Cheyenne hairdresser who 15 years ago helped start an annual summer campout for gay men in the Medicine Bow National Forest. The Rendezvous - named for 19th-century gatherings of mountain men, trappers and assorted frontier oddballs - went on to become an institution of Wyoming gay life.
"It's fun for people to have the opportunity to be ourselves and forget about fears," said Mr. Corrigan, quickly adding that there is probably less reason than there used to be for gay men here to be fearful. "Matthew Shepard was an anomaly," he said. "I think that once this film opens here, if it ever does, it will open a lot of people's eyes."
And yet even activists like Mr. Corrigan and his partner, a government employee, concede that tolerance can seem provisional and that gays may be welcome in Wyoming, but typically with the proviso that they are not "Will & Grace" gay.
"I know there are a lot of gay guys in Cheyenne, and it's pretty much accepted, in a way," said Julie Tottingham, the manager of Corral West Ranchwear in Cheyenne, the city's largest purveyor of boot-cut Wranglers, ostrich-skin Tony Lamas and broad-brim buffalo-felt Stetsons. "But at the same time, a lot of our customers would be offended if a gay guy was in here shopping," Ms. Tottingham said. "They'd feel it's an insult to the cowboy way of life."
Among the locals who got an opportunity to see [Brokeback Mountain at the screening in Jackson was Jade Beus, an openly gay former cowboy raised on a sheep ranch in Soda Springs, Idaho. "I had more or less that same experience," said Mr. Beus, referring to the characters' struggles. "Trying to find self-acceptance literally took me to a place where I thought I was such a bad person I once put a pistol to the roof of my mouth."
Mr. Beus, who now owns a heating and plumbing contracting company, is not certain what it was that prevented him from taking his own life. "But something clicked over," he said. "I believe greatly in a higher power and I realized He dealt me this particular hand," Mr. Beus said. "I'm a man's man. I'm not feminine at all. Other people might slander me for who I am, but I made a decision a long time ago that I'm not going through life hating myself because I love men."
