Anthony: Yeah, I guess like, it makes sense to kind of talk a little bit about being queer at the Shepard Museum. You know, I think I've, I knew that I was queer from a very young age, but I grew up in a really small town, Saratoga, just over the. 

Misty: Oh, it's a very pretty place. Yeah, but not urban. No. Not multifaceted. 

Anthony: No. So growing up there was always really interesting in terms of like, queerness in Wyoming. I was born in 1998, which was also the year the Matthew Shepard happened. And so the first time I heard the name Matthew Shepard was in high school, and I came out to my mom and she, like, immediately was like, you need to be careful.

Misty: Because she remembered. Yeah, she lived through it.

Anthony: So I think for her it was very much like a like, this is really scary to have my child say that. And then, right as they're about to leave, she had to go to college. But then I had a moment where I was sitting in a game store. I went with my roommate, my boyfriend at the time, to the game store, and there was this kind of older man there who ended up playing cards with us. And it just kind of got like, you know, we introduced ourselves and everything. I'm like, this is my boyfriend. I was trying to be very casual, right? He kind of brought up unprompted, Matthew Shepard and then was talking very strangely about it. He was like, well, that was a drug thing. I was like, what are you talking about? 

Anthony: And that was like the second time I'd really ever had this incident brought up to me. And so I went home, and I did a bunch of research. And so that kind of is where it all really snapped together. 

Misty: What snapped together? 

Anthony: I was studying English, and it's what made me also really want to study rhetoric was because I was like, ah, there are these narratives that have formed around him, around this person, right, that are connected to me through my queerness. Right?

Misty: And where I live.

Anthony: And where I live and my personality 

Misty: And mother's experience. 

Anthony: Yeah, and my mom's experience, like having children around that time. And, you know, I called her, and I was asking about it, and she told me a bunch of stories about, like, growing up with queer people in the town. And, you know, she's like, I've never gotten it. Like, why people can't just let people live. And that felt like such a such an important way for her to say that. It's like, why can't you just let people live?

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.