During Wyoming’s recent lawmaking session in Cheyenne, a woman started testifying to a committee and purposely called the male committee chair “madame chairman.”
The bearded, gruff chairman, taken aback politely tried to correct the individual, who responded that he could not force the use of any pronouns.
After that, the committee and the legislature passed a new law to restrict the government from forcing people to use pronouns that unsettle them against their will.
This week, a former Laramie County librarian testified to a legislative committee. He asked if the chairman had reviewed the entire book “Gender Queer” from the kids’ library or just the “naughty bits.”
I read it and there are quite a few.
These two issues demonstrate a complete lack of decorum and a departure from reality. And decisions with which 99% of people who vote would not agree.
Nonetheless, as commonsense as these principles are, you will find them hotly contested in the public square. With lobbyists, “non-profit” public interest groups, campaign slogans and more.
Politics is taking a turn, as it should in my opinion, with individuals being held publicly accountable and more and more people speaking the truth.
This week Secretary of State Chuck Gray called out obvious truth.
Most people in Wyoming do not want Wyoming to look like a sold-out wind farm. He posted a photograph showing a broken piece of a wind turbine.
Nobody cares how it broke.
It matters how our state feels and looks. If some cronies had their way, Wyoming would be a nuclear waste storage facility with wind turbine graveyards peppering the highways.
Our vision for Wyoming remains different. True to her spirit, Wyoming should be kept open and free. The government should find better ways to fund its expense and bureaucratic agendas. The government’s role and presence in people’s lives should decrease.
Wyoming is far better off supporting its cattle industry and agriculture industry to keep up with the opportunities available via President Trump’s trade deals.
If we sell out to green energy special interests, that will leave us hopeless and our lands used up. We need a governor who focuses on the opportunity of the industries of the common man, not some trendy agendas like crypto and wind.
The governor likely grew so defensive about the comments of Secretary Gray because he knows they are true.
Gray’s town hall in Lusk should tell the establishment everything it needs to know.
So, I circle back to where I began, which was giving you these three political examples.
The pronouns, the library book issue, and the Secretary of State/Governor tit for tat show us that oftentimes the opposition doesn’t see the issue for what it is.
In the pronoun scenario, the individual who testified so disrespectfully was no doubt trying to prove the point of “the government can’t tell me what to do.” I understand that. However, breaching decorum and just being disrespectful doesn’t make the point well.
Instead, the issue is that we don’t have to live a lie. You are free to have your choice but you cannot force me to engage in delusion alongside you.
It violates my freedom of religion and compromises my common sense, what I know to be true. To me, the opposition fails to recognize that we are on the side of truth.
The establishment should have to tell the truth, never engaging in the whims of either political tipping scale or side. We are free individuals who cannot be told by our government how to speak.
In the library book issue, most people agree that children should not be given access to pornographic material. Yet that is exactly what is happening, even in Wyoming.
What the testifier couldn’t understand was that this book didn’t just have “naughty bits,” it was pornographic in nature and if someone gave it to our own children we would be mortified, yet because it is in a government library it is acceptable?
No, that position lacks any sense and the only reason the left supports this dumb idea is because they all wear woke badges of honor to see who can be the wokest of them all.
The most inclusive, multiple-pronouns, Kamala-Harris lovers you can imagine.
They are a small minority, but in my experience, are well-funded, strategic, and loud. I believe this is a battle of good and evil. We are not in the business of allowing the government to raise our children as they see fit.
And as for the situation with Governor Gordon and Secretary Gray, I think the winner of that round goes to the individual with whom most Wyomingites agree.
The Lusk town hall sent a pretty clear message on that one.
Cowboy State Daily columnist Cassie Craven is a University of Wyoming College of Law graduate who practices law in Wyoming. She can be reached at: longhornwritingllc@gmail.com
