As a Montana city reckons with Pride Month, the pain of exclusion lingers

GREAT FALLS, Mont. – The temperature was just above freezing on a Friday night outside the Cowboys Bar. A man had been asked to leave the local watering hole, where antique guns and lassoes, symbols of an era that no longer exists, clung to the wall in a building that doubles as a museum meant to “perpetuate the historical importance of our Western heritage.” 

In the parking lot, a woman fought for her life. Her pelvis was fractured. She was likely bleeding internally. Her left leg had a severe puncture wound. 

The ousted patron had rammed the woman with his truck, pinning her to the bar’s exterior, according to law enforcement and court documents. A witness told police the man driving the truck had been yelling at the woman about “being transgender.” The woman, whom USA TODAY is not naming for safety reasons, is not trans; she identifies as lesbian, according to her friend, Noelle Roberts.

Roberts remembers her ex-husband, who was also out at Cowboys Bar, called her that night. 

"What do you mean she got hit by a truck?" Roberts said.

“She got hit by a drunk driver,” her husband replied. “He hit her on purpose.”

As the victim of the February 2023 attack continued her protracted recovery, the city’s longtime mayor, Bob Kelly, took an unprecedented step. He declared June as LGBTQ+ Pride Month, a landmark for Great Falls, a city whose population has long hovered around 60,000.

Now the city has a new mayor, Cory Reeves, who said last week he believes local government should neither “condemn nor celebrate” citizens’ personal relationships. He refused to honor Pride Month, which is widely recognized in municipalities across the country as a time to affirm and celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) people and their distinct cultures. 

Such honors are a matter of government overreach, said the mayor, who also noted he firmly believes in equality for everyone. Six days after Reeves’ decision, which has splintered the community, the pastor at an LGBTQ-friendly church on the east side of town found a homophobic note tacked on to the back door of the parish. 

The ebb and flow of aggression in this Montana city is a microcosm of what’s happening in communities across the country as a vulnerable U.S. population remains oppressed due to the sexual orientations and gender identities of its diverse members. Research shows those human traits are shaped by many complex factors, including genetics and environment, that are largely outside a person's control.

The debate over recognizing Pride Month mirrors similar conundrums that crop up regularly in small cities and rural towns every June. The situation in Montana, however, underlines a specific libertarian bent in the region.

Although related controversies have recently engulfed municipal governments in Washington, California and Maryland, the country has largely evolved. Pride proclamations have become a mainstream concept in recent years, even as anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes skyrocketed. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, a national coalition of city leaders, has long supported LGBTQ+ rights. Last week the group reaffirmed its commitment to lifting up queer and trans communities. The announcement came the same day as the decision from the Great Falls mayor.

In smaller cities, Pride Month designations often serve as more of a temperature check for progress toward LGBTQ+ equality. Though ceremonial, they can play a vital role in signaling – both to queer people and those who would do them harm – the strength of a place's resolve to defend its LGBTQ+ residents, experts say. 

“They need a sense of belonging and assurance that their government has their backs, too,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of the national LGBTQ+ rights organization GLAAD.

John Carr, the defendant awaiting trial in the 2023 assault outside the Cowboys Bar, has pleaded not guilty to felony charges of criminal endangerment and failing to stop and remain at a scene following a serious bodily injury. In an emailed statement, Carr's attorney, Samir Faerevik Aarab, told USA TODAY: “Pleading ‘Not Guilty’ is what most people charged with a crime do if they believe they didn’t commit a crime. It is the Government’s burden to demonstrate that they did.” Aarab declined to comment further. 

A trial date still awaits, said Joshua Racki, the county attorney. He said Carr wasn’t charged with a hate crime because of limitations in state laws. He noted that a criminal endangerment charge would carry a greater penalty than a hate crime charge in this case. 

To Roberts, who raised thousands of dollars for her friend’s recovery, what happened last year was a hate crime regardless of the legal semantics. Following a stint in the intensive-care unit last February, her friend was moved to physical therapy.

The woman was hospitalized for more than a month, Roberts said, and still feels occasional pain in her left leg. She used to go out with her friends all the time – including with Roberts, who is a 39-year-old karaoke DJ. Now she is more reticent.

“Physically, she’s 100% better. Mentally and emotionally, I don’t know if she’ll ever get there,” Roberts said. “I can’t imagine the kind of fear that puts in a person.”

An angry missive

“Shame on you...” 

The words were scribbled across a sheet of decorative stationery fastened last Sunday morning to the back door of First Congregational United Church of Christ, a quaint parish sandwiched between a Dairy Queen and a residential neighborhood. Drawings of snowflakes adorned the top right corner of the note. They clashed with the warm summer day. 

That afternoon, the Rev. Lynne Spencer-Smith sat in her office, near a human-size LGBTQ+ Pride flag inside the church’s entrance. A rainbow heart logo on her gray T-shirt rested just above her actual heart. 

She grabbed the note from her desk. Shame on her church, scolded the author, in slightly jumbled prose, for “pushing LGBTQ on people as a Christian entity.” 

The pastor wasn’t sure who had posted the homophobic message. But she knew that about a week earlier the mayor declined to honor Pride Month. 

The former county undersheriff, who became mayor in January, elaborated in a Facebook post: “While I firmly believe in equality for all individuals, I also believe that the government should not be involved in matters concerning personal and private relationships, whether they involve straight individuals or members of the LGBTQ+ community.” Reeves declined an interview with USA TODAY. He said in an email that his social media post spoke for itself. 

Reeves has not opposed all proclamations. Earlier this year he recognized February as Black History Month, according to minutes and a video recording of a January city commission meeting. He designated May as Jewish American Heritage Month. After nixing Pride Month he may be going further: He said last week he is considering ending all future citywide proclamations. 

With the Pride Month decision, the backlash was swift. Spencer-Smith, who says she is about as “straight and cisgender as they come,” joined an impassioned group of residents filling the rows at a city commission meeting last Tuesday to condemn the mayor’s stance.

In a chair in front of her desk, Spencer-Smith turned over the hateful note in her hand. 

“I think we’re regressing,” she said. 

Pride: a local litmus test 

Pride Month means a lot of things to queer and transgender people. It’s about being in community with one another without shame; about commemorating the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, a major milestone in the gay rights movement; about sweating at parades and dancing with drag queens; and about marking a decades-long fight for equal rights. 

A college LGBTQ+ center disappeared.It wasn’t the only one.

Despite great strides, that struggle has calcified in recent years amid a slew of state bills aimed at stripping away queer and trans rights. The number of state anti-LGBTQ+ bills – restricting gender-affirming care and limiting queer representation in the classroom – reached unprecedented numbers last year.

Municipal governments, in many cases, stepped in to intervene on behalf of residents. More cities than ever before averaged high marks on the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index, which ranks cities based on their LGBTQ+ representation and policies. (In 2023 Great Falls rated abysmally, at 13 out of 100.)

In reality, small cities are replete with LGBTQ+ residents. An April 2019 report from the Movement Advancement Project, a progressive think tank, estimated roughly three to four million queer and trans people live in rural America. That was before the pandemic, when many Americans opted to leave urban centers in favor of cheaper suburban and rural areas, where they could work from home. Even when queer people leave unsupportive places, some recent research suggests they don’t always end up in communities that are friendlier. 

In May, City Council members in Yakima, Washington, rejected a Pride Month proclamation – a choice a local LGBTQ+ group said showed “blatant disregard for a significant segment of our community.” A similar repudiation befell the nearby town of Sunnyside the following week. And the mayor of Vacaville, about an hour from San Francisco, declined to sign a local Pride proclamation this year, the East Bay Times reported. 

A rainbow political wave?As culture wars rage, why more LGBTQ candidates are entering the 'blood sport' of politics

The Montana mayor’s rationale for ignoring Pride Month echoes some of the broader arguments from opponents of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, said Marc Stein, a historian at San Francisco State University. The implication that lifting up certain marginalized groups comes at the expense of others is endemic to a larger nationwide push to curb diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, he said.  

“It comes out of zero-sum-game politics,” he said. “It, too, ignores the specific need for articulating that lives matter when they have been discounted and devalued for so many years.” 

Reeves, a former school resource officer who spent years working with some of the city’s most vulnerable youth, is popular in the community. Years ago he stepped in as a caretaker for a local homeless man. 

Read moreabout the mayor's special relationship with a late homeless man

A 'not particularly friendly' world

Jeffrey Brainard, Reeves' former high school classmate, was among the many residents who denounced the mayor’s decision at last Tuesday’s city commission meeting. 

Brainard was born and raised in Great Falls and spent a number of childhood summers in Spokane, Washington, a city about six hours away and roughly four times the size. He fantasized in his mid-20s about leaving to be in community with a greater number of people like him. That impulse landed him in Colorado and Michigan for a few months at a time.

But something always kept him home. Now in his mid-40s, he has witnessed firsthand how the atmosphere for queer people has fluctuated in Great Falls. At one point, he felt downtown slightly resembled the “gayborhoods” of larger American cities. (The historical term describes urban pockets that queer people migrated to and settled in during the latter half of the 20th century.) Then many of Brainard's LGBTQ+ friends moved away, a phenomenon he described as a “diaspora for no good reason.” 

He’s had slurs hurled at him over the years which resulted in “more than a few fist fights.” In 2020 he watched hopefully as Great Falls considered a non-discrimination ordinance that would have codified protections for LGBTQ+ residents into law. A landmark Supreme Court ruling that year broadly outlawed workplace discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, and many cities enacted non-discrimination ordinances as an extra safeguard. Great Falls’ push for its own official policies fell apart. 

“Am I comfortable holding hands in public with my significant other?” Brainard wondered, sitting on his front porch last Sunday. He peered out into the street, arms crossed. “The answer is no.” 

When a friend texted him last week to share that the city would no longer honor Pride Month, he wanted to give the mayor the benefit of the doubt. So he researched the mayor’s position. The two men agree on at least one point: Both concede the government should keep its nose out of people’s romantic relationships. 

In Montana, libertarian ideals are part of the fabric of state and local politics. The mayor spent several years in county law enforcement alongside a sheriff who balked at enforcing mask mandates at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But to Brainard, recognizing Pride Month is not a political endorsement of a behavior. It’s not about “who should love who,” as the mayor put it. Being part of the queer community is about more than that, Brainard said. 

“It’s fundamentally a question of identity,” he said. “We’ve got to deal with a world that is not particularly friendly.” 

Susan Wolff, a city commissioner, described the same argument a different way.

“Too often the whole conversation centers around what happens in the bedroom, rather than being focused on being part of a marginalized section in our society,” she said. Wolff, a retired college dean, told USA TODAY the mayor’s abrupt decree, which she opposes, took her by surprise. 

A ‘loud and clear’ message

Christine Straight laughed as she introduced herself – it’s not lost on her that her last name is a bit of an oxymoron. A good portion of the 51-year-old lesbian’s family isn’t, in fact, straight. That includes her sister, as well as her nonbinary adult child.

Straight moved to Great Falls when she was 7, but, like many queer people who end up relocating, she never felt she could fully be herself. After she graduated from high school in the 1990s, she moved to Seattle. Her sister left, too (a phenomenon commonly known as “gay flight”). Straight came out in the ultra-liberal Washington metropolis and stayed there for three decades. 

Being apart from her mother was tough. Straight returned to Great Falls in 2022 to spend more time with her. She had one condition, though. 

“I can't come back and not be part of the healing of this community,” she recalled telling her mom. She began volunteering for the local LGBTQ+ Center, a rainbow-plastered office on the second floor of a business complex downtown. 

Immediately she encountered a wariness in the community about the center’s work. Some local businesses that had previously supported the center were suddenly more reticent in their solidarity. It’s an election year, she surmised. People are polarized. 

“The message of people not wanting us here is kind of loud and clear,” Straight said. 

Seeing water

When the mayor refused to issue a Pride proclamation, Straight wasn’t necessarily stunned. Neither was Mathew Pipinich, the 41-year-old president of the LGBTQ+ Center. 

“Growth is not linear,” said Pipinich, who owns a coffee shop and is gay. “I understand that.” 

The controversy reminded him of a popular speech by the novelist David Foster Wallace. In a 2005 commencement address often cited by self-help gurus, Wallace told a fictional story about an older fish approaching two younger ones. 

“‘How’s the water?’” the older fish asks (in Wallace’s telling). The young ones look at each other, wondering, “What the hell is water?”

The concept of water would be tough for a little fish to grasp, Wallace explained, without spending any time above it, or on land. 

It’s an anecdote that Pipinich said aptly demonstrates how tough it can be for those who don’t identify as LGBTQ+ to empathize with the struggles of queer and trans people. But with a willingness to learn, it’s possible. The mayor, he said, “truly has a heart and desire to improve his community.” 

“Let’s start with that piece,” he said. “And get him to see the water.”

Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.