Stilettos take on the galaxy at Drag Queen Bingo 2025
Amid attacks on HIV research and prevention efforts, the Laramie queens raised $41,000 to assist their neighbors. Since last year’s bingo, the Stilettos have earned the ire of the state’s right-wing.
In their first public appearance since catching the eye of right-wing state lawmakers, the Stilettos took to the stage at this year’s Drag Queen Bingo, ultimately raking in more than $41,000.
As a creation of the nonprofit WyoAids Assistance, the celebrated annual event is Wyoming’s preeminent fundraiser for residents living with HIV/AIDS. This year’s theme was all things space and sci-fi.
The oversized checks, loose dollar bills and other donations gathered throughout the evening ultimately support access to specialist care. The money raised helps to cover the food, fuel and lodging costs Wyomingites often incur traveling to the handful of in-state specialist providers in Casper or Cheyenne.
Temple Ceiling, one of the Stilettos and a board member for WyoAids, said the cause was more important than ever — as HIV diagnoses rise and federal prevention dollars are slashed.
“We are a drop in the bucket compared to what the need is,” Ceiling said. “People are reaching out, looking for assistance, and we’re going to do our best, but we have a lot to do.”
Ceiling, who has performed with the Stilettos for more than a decade, said they were originally “a reluctant drag queen.”
“This is a lot of hard work, and it’s painful,” Ceiling said. “But for me, the things I enjoy are being with these really great people that I get to hang out with and do something good with. We’re trying to make the world better. We all have jobs, and we all are grown-up, professional people — but we want our world and our community to be a good place.”
Ceiling isn’t the only board member who took up drag out of necessity.
The bingo began more than 20 years ago, as an after-party-style fundraiser following the Wyoming AIDS Walk. At the time, Denver-based queens made the journey up Interstate 25 to lend their talents to the cause.
But in 2005, when scheduling conflicts meant the queens could no longer make it up to Laramie, the nonprofit board had to take it upon themselves to keep the charitable tradition alive.
Thus, the Stilettos were born.
“We had to step up and step into the heels, as it were,” performer and board member Ms. Martina Gras told the Laramie Reporter in 2023.
The bingo has raised more than $700,000 since its inception, including more than $40,000 for each of the last several years.
The Stilettos proudly bill the evening as adults-only, and forbid anyone under the age of 18 from attending. That has not spared it the ire of right-wing state lawmakers, who first started attacking the bingo last spring.
During the 2025 legislative session this winter, Republican lawmakers brought a bill aiming to cut off one of Drag Queen Bingo’s funding sources.
Specifically, the bill would have forbidden the state health department from funding on-site HIV testing, which had been a regular feature of the bingo. The state Freedom Caucus argued the use of taxpayer dollars in such close proximity to such an allegedly “perverted and scandalous event” was “an insult to those who have suffered and lost their lives to this deadly and serious disease.”
The caucus claimed money would be better spent on unspecified “evidence-based strategies” for preventing HIV/AIDS. But none of the caucus’ members brought any legislation to support HIV/AIDS prevention, messaging, testing or treatment.
The bill to restrict drag events soared through the Freedom Caucus-dominated House. It died on the Senate floor when the upper chamber ran out of time to consider it.
Despite that apparent victory, this year’s event featured no on-site testing. Attendees were invited to take home a DIY test kit instead.
HIV transmission is not limited to the gay community, but it has become integrally linked to the struggle for LGBTQ+ acceptance in the United States.
It spread in the queer community first, and the research, acknowledgement and other resources that could have saved lives were withheld — largely because leaders, including President Ronald Reagan, did not take the epidemic seriously, or else did not care about gay lives.
Even after AIDS started gaining recognition, members of the gay community feared not just the disease itself, but also the stigma attached to the disease. Because it was still viewed as a “gay plague,” patients could be outed if their diagnosis was known.
After decades of horror and loss, there are now highly effective treatments. But in rural Wyoming, specialists are few and far between. HIV diagnoses are on the rise in Wyoming, including among straight individuals who often mistakenly assume they are immune.
Today, HIV prevention is under attack on the national level.
Despite HIV regularly claiming 8,000 lives a year, the Trump administration is gutting the offices tasked with HIV eradication and slashing HIV and AIDS research funding.
WyoAIDS Assistance accepts donations year-round. During Saturday’s event, the queens announced they would return in April 2026.
I lost my brother many years ago to aids. The only reason he had a decent quality of life was because of the Ryan White fund. Pretty sad to see it's still the people that started the fight against HIV/Aids that are still carrying the burden of being out front. The "freedom caucus" is a damned joke. I can't wait until they slither back under their rock and become irrelevant again. #RESIST!
Really pleased to see the legislators focusing on the important stuff instead of unimportant issues like rural health care, rural internet, Wyoming jobs, declining university enrollments, energy research … oh Upps I got mixed up here - that’s right preventing HIV/AIDS care that’s the priority!!