Now in their 30s, Jason Marsden and Guy Padgett have settled into living a boring middle-class existence.

They own a modest house on Willow Street, worry about their retirement funds, hold day jobs, attend dinner parties, and feed a standoffish cat named Miss Kitty.

Last week, their house was a mid-home-remodeling mess, with the recently uncovered and probably pine living room floor awaiting a furious sanding and refinishing.

They're Casper's best known gay couple, having been together for more than a decade, and featured in Time Magazine and other media.

Padgett has a graphic design business, worked for the Nicolaysen Art Museum and the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra, and has been a city council member and mayor of Casper.

Marsden grew up in a farming family, became the first person in his family to attend college (Harvard University), worked as a reporter and Washington, D.C., correspondent for the Casper Star-Tribune, and now heads the nonprofit Wyoming Conservation Voters.

Both knew Matthew Shepard, who grew up in Casper and was murdered outside of Laramie 10 years ago by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson who are each serving two life sentences after pleading guilty to felony murder and kidnapping to avoid the death penalty.

"It always felt very aberrant to me that it happened in Laramie," Marsden said last week.

Laramie was the fun place to go to hang out with friends, have a drink at the Buckhorn, and engage with the intellectual climate, he said.

Marsden fears another gay murder will occur in Wyoming, cementing an undeserved label of "hate state" for a long time to come.

While instances of discrimination, insults and similar behavior are not unknown among gays in Wyoming, they said they've been left alone.

Wyoming prides itself on a libertarian live-and-let-live attitude, even extending to sexual orientation, they said.

Meanwhile the social "gay identity" is no longer being associated with "gay bars" or "gay churches" or "gay softball leagues," Marsden said.

But that attitude stalls when it comes to politics.

Shepard's murder crossed the lines of social and political behavior, Marsden said.

Padgett said no one he knows would deny him the right to visit Marsden in the hospital as a family member.

But that changes when the Legislature is in session, he said.

They first merged with an unsuccessful effort to pass a hate crimes bill, which would have imposed enhanced penalties for certain types of crimes, such as federal crimes committed with firearms that tack on an automatic five-year prison term.

The politics resurfaced in the Legislature in 2007 with a bill that would have barred Wyoming from recognizing gay marriages from other states.

The bill passed the Senate but died in a House committee where House Speaker Roy Cohee, R-Casper, cast the tie-breaking vote to kill it.

The commitment and legal matters may not have bothered Marsden and Padgett in the past, but that's changing as they grow older.

"Gay marriage is a bigger deal with us," Padgett said.

It's a matter of protecting their family, Padgett said. "I simply want to partake of that."

Marriage for straight people can happen under the most trivial circumstances, Marsden said. "You can do that at 2 a.m. in Vegas with Elvis presiding."

So what's the problem with gays and lesbians marrying?

"I feel pain for people who think our desire for legal protection would harm them," he said.

Becky Vandeberghe, co-director of WyWatch, said the federal government allows states to protect themselves from gay marriages performed in other states, and Wyoming is one of the few that doesn't have this protection.

Allowing gay marriage would redefine marriage as something in addition to being between one man and one woman, Vandeberghe said.

"We're trying to keep with our traditions of our founding fathers," she said. "This country was founded on Christian beliefs."

Yet the committee testimony of the conservative Rep. Pat Childers, R-Cody, indicated to Marsden that the gay marriage issue goes beyond party or ideological lines.

He told the committee as a citizen that his daughter is gay, and the bill would have infringed on her civil rights

That impressed Marsden. "It demonstrated to me as vividly as anything that this is not a left-right issue."

So Wyoming has some issues to confront, he said. "The will of the people is they're not crazy to help us."

If Marsden and Padgett got married in California and came back, what would happen, Marsden asked.

"Are we the kind of state that would tear up the marriage license? But we'll elect people to do the same thing," he said.

Part of the dispute over marriage centers on mixing rights and religious blessings, he said.

"If it's a conflation of civil and religious marriage that's holding up our ability to protect our family, then I'll work to pull that apart," Marsden said.

Reach Tom Morton at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@trib.com.