State Lawmaker: Wyoming Equality Needs To Stop Exploiting Kids

A state legislator from Campbell County is accusing Wyoming Equality of exploiting children for political purposes.

Wyoming Equality lobbies for the rights of LGBTQ residents.

But Rep. Scott Clem [R-Campbell County] says the organization has exploited kids to further agenda in two recent incidents. The first happened in February when members of the Cheyenne Central High School Gay-Straight Alliance accused Sen. Lynn Hutchings [R-Laramie County] of comparing homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality.

Hutchings said her comments to the group did nothing of the sort.

Wyoming Equality filed an informal complaint with legislative leadership over the incident.

A more recent incident involved racist and anti-gay flyers which were posted at McCormick Junior High School in Cheyenne. A substitute teacher contacted Wyoming Equality over the incident. Clem claims the organization was wrong in both cases to bring the incidents to the media rather than trying to work behind the scenes to resolve the issues. In a Facebook post over the weekend on the KGAB.com page,

Clem accused Wyoming Equality of throwing kids "to the media wolves" in an effort to further its own agenda.  In an interview with Glenn Woods of KGAB radio on Tuesday, Clem expounded further on the subject. You can hear the interview with the video attached to this article.

KGAB news attempted to contact Wyoming Equality Executive Director Sara Burlingame via both email and telephone on Tuesday morning about Clem's comments but did not get receive immediate response Burlingame is also a state legislator [D-Laramie County].