Friends, Lynn Hutchings is no joke

BY D. REED ECKHARDT

Ha, ha, ha! Ho, ho, ho!

Comedian and commentator John Oliver recently shredded state Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-District 5, on national TV because of her comments about the death penalty.

Speaking against a recent bill that would have ended the death penalty in Wyoming, the state senator from northwest Cheyenne and western Laramie County said:

“The greatest man who ever lived died via the death penalty

for you and me…” she said. “If it wasn’t for Jesus dying via the death penalty, we would all have no hope.”

Really? Wyoming needs the death penalty because Jesus died on the cross? No wonder the Cowboy State is a national laughingstock.

HBO’s Oliver used Hutchings as the butt a joke, as a way to point out

State Sen. Lynn Hutchings speaks at the Capitol.

 the hypocrisy of so-called Christians who support the death penalty. This despite the fact that their own Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill,” and that the aforementioned Jesus preached love and forgiveness for his fellow humans, not killing them.

But please get this: Lynn Hutchings is no joke. 

She represents the worst that is Wyoming. And those who want their state to live up to its motto of “The Equality State” would do well to shun her and those who think like her. The only “equality” they are interested in is that which is fundamentalist Christian and ultra-conservative and whose members swim in their so-called mainstream. And they will say – and do – anything to maintain their ill-gotten cultural dominance.

Perhaps the only good thing about Oliver’s use of Hutchings’ words to make jokes about Wyoming was her reaction: She pretended to laugh it off.

“I guess if it makes someone happy to make fun of me, let them have at it,” she told the local newspaper.

That certainly is a change from her usual approach. Normally when she is criticized she dons the cloak of victimhood and wails and gnashes her teeth about how “unfairly” she is being treated. It’s ironic that she who regularly assaults members of the LGBT-plus community for playing the roles of victims so easily scuttles under that same mantle when it serves her agenda.

Hutchings’ history in the Legislature is filled with hateful comments and untruths in her efforts to assault the LGBT-plus community. At one time during testimony she even declined to call AIDS by its name. That was in 2013, when she falsely asserted that homosexuality can be “dangerous” and then used the discredited term GRID, “gay-related immune deficiency,” in the place of AIDS as a slap at Wyoming’s gay men.

Those comments brought swift response from the LGBT-plus community and its supporters. But rather than admit to wrongly trying to smear an entire class of people, Hutchings asserted she was being “threatened” by those who disagreed with her. Apparently in her mind, free hate speech is acceptable, honest response is not.

That the Legislature did not reprimand Hutchings in its most recent session for her comparison of a group of LGBT-plus high school students to practitioners of bestiality, pederasty and hypersexuality is a sad indicator of where Wyoming’s political class is on the issues of sexual orientation and identity. In truth, Ms. Hutchings simply gives voice to her fellow travelers, including legislative leadership and statewide elected officials whose silence about her remarks was deafening. 

Unfortunately, Ms. Hutchings is not up for re-election next year. She won a four-year term in 2018 because of the short memory of the voters, a placid local media that refused to stand against her past hateful speech and a group of self-ambitious, more moderate Republicans, none of whom would step aside for the other and who therefore split their votes and let Hutchings waltz into office.

It is up to all who believe Wyoming can truly be the Equality State to keep a close eye on Hutchings and her ilk. Any and all of their hateful efforts aimed at keeping LGBT-plus residents from accessing their rights should be countered with a verbal whirlwind. 

That lawmakers refused to support workplace protections for LGBT-plus residents this past session shows how just much work there is to left do to make Wyoming a safe place for its residents. Watch and listen to Lynn Hutchings and you will hear what they rest of them are saying and thinking.

A friend of mine says I am unfair to Hutchings, that she really is a nice person. But I couldn’t care less if she is well-mannered and friendly at rubber chicken dinners. I care more about what she does and says in her public role as a state senator. In that, she is an abject failure – and a terrible representative to the nation of what Wyoming is supposed to really be all about. 

And that, friends, is no laughing matter.

D. Reed Eckhardt is the former executive editor of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.