CW: This article contains descriptions of hate crimes and violent jokes.
Colin Monahan knew that Wyoming would be a change of pace, but she thought she was ready for it. In 2016, Monahan and her partner of 30 years, Shannon Lastowski, moved from the Chicago suburbs to Wapiti, a small unincorporated community in the northwest corner of the state, following her retirement. The couple had visited nearby Yellowstone National Park years prior and Monahan, who loves to hunt, was drawn to an otherworldly landscape that she describes as like something out of the 1993 film Jurassic Park.
“We’ve got buffalo and everything walking through,” Monahan told them., as Lastowski interjected that they frequently have moose wander onto the front porch of their cabin. “It’s just a magical place. That’s why people move here: They want to be amongst the animals and look at the view.”
The wildlife in Wapiti is so omnipresent that Lastowski noted that nearly all residents are forced to carry a gun with them for their protection at all times. In July, officials with Yellowstone reported that there had been a record number of grizzly bear attacks in 2020, numbering seven in the tri-state area of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. “It doesn’t matter who you are: If you open up their shirt or their purse, there’s a gun there,” Lastowski asserted.
But the possibility that a loaded firearm may be lurking inside someone else’s coat jacket wasn’t an issue until it showed up on their doorstep. On October 9, a group of five individuals from the local community came to their property and demanded that they vacate the premises immediately and never return. “Your kind is not welcome here, and you need to leave,” a woman told them, referring to the fact that they are a lesbian couple.
Monahan told the group repeatedly to get in their trucks and drive away, but they ignored the requests, menacingly crowding around the couple’s front porch in a semicircle. Lastowski went inside to call 911, but her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn’t dial the phone; she had to hand the receiver to Monahan.
Because the expansive area is so sparsely populated, an officer was unable to come out to their home. There’s typically only one deputy sheriff on duty at any given time, and Monahan had to file a police report over the phone.
Monahan said their harassers responded with a smirk and “turned around and started walking away really slowly,” likely knowing that there was very little that the police could do about the situation. Under Wyoming law, Monahan said individuals are only charged with harassment if the particular incident is a repeat offense. Otherwise the crime would likely be labeled as civil trespassing, which Lastowski feels isn’t enough to illustrate that what their assailants did was wrong.
“This was premeditated,” she said. “They meant to intimidate us, and you know what? They succeeded. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m intimidated. You win. This is my gift to you.”
What Monahan and Lastowski say they want now is what Wyoming has failed to deliver in the 22 years since the murder of Matthew Shepard put the state in the national spotlight: a comprehensive hate crime law. Although the city of Laramie passed its own local ordinance after the 21-year-old gay student was left to die when he was tied to a fence post on October 6, 1998, Wyoming is one of just three U.S. states lacking hate crimes legislation for any marginalized group, whether the victim is LGBTQ+, Native American, Jewish, Muslim, or a person of color.
An effort to pass a hate crimes bill in Wyoming stalled in 1999 after legislation failed by a one-vote margin in its state House and hasn’t gotten any closer since, even despite the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. Signed by former President Barack Obama, that landmark law was also named after James Byrd, Jr., a 39-year-old Black man who was murdered on June 7, 1998 by three white supremacists in Jasper, Texas who dragged him behind a pickup truck.
