Dear editor:
If the Freedom Caucus truly cared about protecting women and children, they would focus on the issues that genuinely impact their safety and well-being: addressing Wyoming’s alarmingly high rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child poverty.
They would invest in education, mental health resources, and community support systems. These are the issues that Wyoming families care about — not invasive, discriminatory policies targeting a small, marginalized group.
In a state that prides itself on rugged independence, small government, and respect for personal freedoms, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is taking a puzzling — and frankly troubling — turn.
Their recent hyper-fixation on transgender people, a community of about 2,500 individuals in a state of just under 600,000 people, exposes a stark contradiction in their rhetoric and actions.
The Freedom Caucus frequently claims to champion limited government and local control. Yet, the legislation they champion under the guise of protecting women and children often amounts to a blatant overreach of state government power.
These bills don’t reflect Wyoming’s values of freedom and individual autonomy. Instead, they represent an invasive obsession with controlling one of the most personal aspects of people’s lives, our bodies—specifically, in this case, the bodies of transgender people.
You may remember that Wyoming strengthened our constitution (Article 1, section 38) to stand on freedom to decide for yourself and your family, what medical decisions are best for ones own healthcare. “(a) Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions. The parent, guardian or legal representative of any other natural person shall have the right to make health care decisions for that person. (d) The state of Wyoming shall act to preserve these rights from undue governmental infringement.”
Now, let’s talk numbers. Wyoming’s transgender population makes up less than 0.417% of the state. We’re an important community, everyone is important, but is this really how we are spending these precious legislative days?
Even in small communities, the idea that these individuals pose an existential threat to women, children, or public safety is not grounded in evidence. What is grounded in reality, however, is the harm caused by stigmatizing and targeting an already vulnerable community.
Legislation pushed by the Freedom Caucus often seeks to restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare, ban transgender students from participating in sports, or control which bathrooms people can use.
These laws do not protect women and children. What they do is create fear, strip away personal freedoms, and perpetuate discrimination. If you think these bills will only impact transgender people, you could not be more wrong.
Consider the hypocrisy. This is the same group that rails against government overreach, federal mandates, and any policy they perceive as infringing on individual liberties.
Yet when it comes to transgender people, they are eager to enact sweeping government controls—dictating medical decisions, school policies, and even where people can exist in public spaces.
Their rhetoric about “protecting women and children” conveniently ignores the fact that these policies solve no real problems while creating countless new ones.
The Freedom Caucus’s fixation on transgender people is not about protection. It’s about distraction. It’s easier to scapegoat a tiny community than to face the complex, systemic issues that actually require effort and resources to address.
And by weaponizing fear and misinformation, they are betraying Wyoming’s legacy as the Equality State—a state that, once upon a time, stood for something better.
Wyomingites deserve leadership that focuses on real solutions, not culture wars.
The Freedom Caucus claims to stand for freedom, but their actions tell a different story. It’s time for us to demand more from our lawmakers—more honesty, more integrity, and a renewed commitment to the values that truly define Wyoming.
Let’s remind them that freedom means freedom for everyone, not just the people they agree with. And let’s reject the politics of fear in favor of the promise of fairness and dignity for all.
Sincerely
Elliott Hinkle, Casper
