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A native of the Philadelphia suburbs, Pellecchia moved to Cheyenne with his partner, Tony Hughes, in June 2002. "I guess I didn't expect that people in Wyoming would be as closeted as they are," he says. One reason is that gay bashings still occur. Not long ago, Pellecchia says, a gay couple were assaulted in a bar in a rural part of Wyoming. One of the victims had to see a doctor for bruised ribs and cartilage damage. But the men didn't file a police report. "I suspect it has to do with them not wanting to out themselves to the police," says Pellecchia. "They were embarrassed to say they were gay."
The rules are enforced in more subtle ways too. The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, the Cheyenne daily, ran a photo of two men kissing after trading vows in Vancouver, Canada, where gay marriage is now legal, and the paper was flooded with angry letters. "It made our stomach 'queasy,' feeling like someone ugly and disgusting broke into our home," wrote Ron and Pat Feit of Cheyenne. Others didn't vent such outright bias but instead expressed hope that the "Don't ask, don't tell" system would last. Said Lisa Ray of Pine Bluffs: "I'd suggest that readers who support your agenda with their hard-earned money place your publication in the same location this subject belongs--a closet."
But closet doors are creakily, slowly opening all over the state. Janet de Vries, who has been active in the Casper gay community for more than two decades but had never agreed to have her full name printed in any story about homosexuality, decided last week that she could no longer stay hidden. "I thought, You know, who am I fooling?" says de Vries, 46, a career counselor. "I want to be able to stand up and be proud of who I am. I could die tomorrow, and then, what difference would it make if I kept pretending to hide?"
De Vries hid for all the usual reasons: fears she would be fired--she still doesn't want her employer's name printed here--or attacked or harassed. She and her partner, a closeted government worker, once had reason to suspect an anti-gay hate group was photographing their home, though they never found proof. Such fears can loom large here because gays have no places to gather and buck one another up. "It's hard for gay people to even meet gay people in the state of Wyoming," says de Vries. "The thing that happened when Matt was murdered was that for the first time, I think, the state as a whole was forced to realize that there were gay people living here... Among gay people, the reactions were so far apart: some people dove back into the closet under the laundry. Other people said, 'Screw it; I'm coming out.'"