A local bar in Cheyenne, Wyoming, sparked outrage across the state after selling homophobic T-shirts advocating for violence against people with AIDS, according to local news reports and a statewide advocacy group.
The Eagle’s Nest, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, was criticized after a photo of the shirt began circulating on social media. The shirt features a man pointing a pistol and reads: “In Wyoming, we have a cure for AIDS. We shoot fuck’n faggots.”
The bar sold out of the shirts, according to Raymond Bereziuk, the owner of the bar. He told The Cheyenne Post that he won’t reorder more because he’s “in the bar business, not the apparel business.”
Wyoming Equality, the state’s LGBTQ organization, said in a public Facebook post. “We hoped that they would choose to stop selling them when they realized the harm it did to the LGBTQ community and those living with AIDS.”
The organization said it was working with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBTQ organization to contact the bar’s alcohol distributors and “see if they are ok with working with an establishment selling these types of items,” the group said in a Facebook comment on its post.
Images of the shirt were first circulated by Wyoming Equality, the state’s largest LGBTQ organization, which declined to name the bar out of fear that the bar would gain notoriety among anti-LGBTQ groups or receive more orders requesting shirts.
Wyoming Equality also asked people not to protest the bar, for similar reasons, asking them to instead donate money to it or to the Wyoming AIDS assistance.
Sara Burlingame, the executive director of Wyoming Equality, said that she had previously approached the bar’s owners twice and asked them to stop selling the shirts, but the owners refused.
“Want to make it unpopular to be a bigot?” she wrote in a personal Facebook post. “Donate to Wyoming Equality or Wyoming AIDS Assistance. Put a pride flag up in your business or home. Wear one of our cool AF shirts. Pass a Hate Crime bill. Invest in queer joy and resilience. Let the haters hate in their own misery. Keep Wyoming queer and wild.”
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, released a statement to the Casper Star-Tribune condemning the shirts: “It’s incredibly disheartening to learn that any business would offer a product for sale with a message like this. This hurtful rhetoric is not reflective of our state’s values, and does nothing but promote hate and division.”
Wyoming ranks amongst the U.S. states with the fewest legal protections for LGBTQ individuals, according to the Movement Acceptance Project.
The state gained infamy in October 1998 when 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was beaten to death for being gay. The state still lacks hate crime laws for violence against LGBTQ people, LGBTQ Nation reported.
Sources: OpposingViews, NBC News, The Cheyenne Post