Very Much at Home: A Gay Mayor in Wyoming

Guy Padgett, the openly gay mayor here in Wyoming's second-largest city, had a tough time getting to his table for dinner at a restaurant the other night, interrupted and detained every few feet by a friend, a constituent or some other well-wisher who wanted to shake his hand.

Though neither he nor many other people here have seen it yet, Mr. Padgett says he feels pretty sure that "Brokeback Mountain," the new movie about gay cowboys in Wyoming, will not change those old rhythms of glad-handing very much. People here, he thinks, have gotten past seeing him as gay; to most of them he is now just Guy.

"I like to say that Casper, and Wyoming in general, are places willing to judge you on your accomplishments and contributions rather than any aspect of your character, and I have found that to be true," he said.

Mr. Padgett's career - he is also the executive director of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra, and at 27 the city's youngest mayor ever - puts to rest, he and other prominent people here say, the idea that rugged Western individualism and homophobia are synonymous. Alan K. Simpson, a Republican who served 18 years in the United States Senate and still creates a wide political wake in the state, has been among his most vocal supporters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/national/16casper.html