Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi, a
Republican, said Tuesday that he regrets saying that a man wearing a
tutu in a bar is partly to blame for getting bullied.
Enzi was asked by a group of students
what he and other politicians are doing to improve the lives of
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Wyoming.
“We always say in Wyoming you can be
anything you want to be as long as you don't push it in somebody's
face,” Enzi replied, according to the Greybull Standard, the
student newspaper of the Greybull High School and Middle School where
Enzi was speaking.
To illustrate his point, Enzi said that
he knows a man who wears a tutu to a bar and cannot understand why he
keeps getting in fights.
“Well, he kind of asks for it a
little bit. That's the way that he winds up with that kind of
problem,” Enzi is quoted as saying by the
Greybull
Standard.
In a statement given to
CNN, Enzi said that he regrets his “poor choice of words” and
that his message “was intended specifically to be about promoting
respect and tolerance toward each other.”
Max D'Onofrio, a spokesman for Enzi,
told CNN that Enzi talked to the students about “how many Wyoming
folks take a live-and-let-live approach to life, but we need to be
conscious that everyone may not react the same way to differing value
and belief systems. He advocates nothing but respect and civil
treatment for members of the LGBT community.”