The Colorado Gay Rodeo Affiliation has held a gay rodeo every calendar year considering that 1983, building it the longest-running party of its variety in history.
Their flagship celebration, the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo in Denver, is component of a circuit of rodeos that, at moments, has stretched throughout the United States and into Canada.
Even with the cultural pushback these rodeos have faced, the legacy of the Denver rodeo proceeds as it celebrates its 41st anniversary on July 12-13, 2024.
We investigated the origins of this rodeo for our e-book, “Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Homosexual Rodeo,” which also explores how homosexual rodeoers had been at the forefront of combating discrimination and the AIDS crisis.
Roots in Reno
Homosexual rodeo did not originate in the Rocky Mountains but rather was born in a different mountain vary even further west – the Sierra Nevada.
Businessman Phil Ragsdale held the 1st gay rodeo in 1976 in Reno, Nevada, as a fundraiser for local group companies.
Ragsdale confronted some issues leasing space and animals when arena proprietors and inventory contractors realized the occasion was for queer people.
Even so, Ragsdale’s to start with rodeo largely went off devoid of a hitch. Shortly acknowledged as the National Reno Gay Rodeo, the function expanded from the couple hundred spectators and contributors who attended that 1st yr to an annual function that sometimes attracted more than 10,000 individuals.
In 1981, John King opened Charlie’s Denver, a gay region western bar managed by Wayne Jakino. The location presented a house for cowfolx – or queer ranchers, rodeoers and state western enthusiasts across the gender and sexuality spectrum – to obtain and variety a community. Buddies who fulfilled at the bar traveled en masse to the 1982 Reno rodeo. In 1983, they held their personal rodeo in Denver, calling it the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo.
The Denver rodeo was the first gay rodeo to acquire position outside of Nevada, but it was soon joined by others, with four extra rodeos taking position in Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Dallas by the conclusion of 1986.
Alyson Roy
Colorado’s leadership
Many thanks to the leadership of King and Jakino, the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo assisted other homosexual rodeos get off the ground throughout the United States and Canada.
As Reno’s rodeo stumbled and finally collapsed in 1984, Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo customers labored with groups in Texas, California and Arizona to sort the Intercontinental Homosexual Rodeo Association in 1985. Jakino took the reins as the organization’s to start with president.
Jakino was significantly fascinated in bringing a sense of professionalism to homosexual rodeo, though that emphasis was generally balanced with exciting, campiness and sexual freedom. In 1982, Jakino wrote a letter to Ragsdale in which he outlined his goal of marketing “the professionalism of homosexual rodeos and the satisfaction of our users and rodeo lovers alike.”
Controversy in the Rockies
This emphasis on professionalism didn’t protect the Worldwide Homosexual Rodeo Affiliation from anti-LGBTQ+ backlash.
The Colorado Homosexual Rodeo Association stated to its membership in a 1988 e-newsletter that the initial year the group held the Denver rodeo, 8 arenas turned them away mainly because they were being an LGBTQ+ firm – and that their recent arena was hardly on board with internet hosting them. The team identified as on its membership to get ready on their own for this kind of opposition and to appear with each other in buy to “be a constructive drive in the perfectly currently being of the gay community!”
Anti-LGBTQ+ hostility grew a lot more heated in the 1980s as the AIDS epidemic unfold across the state. Even as the Colorado Homosexual Rodeo Association fought to stay noticeable and existing, its customers ended up basically combating for their lives. Two of the group’s founding users died of AIDS in 1986, and the corporation directed its fundraising initiatives toward assisting with the HIV-AIDS crisis.
With the enlargement of the Christian Ideal in the 1980s and ‘90s, Colorado professional powerful strategies to oppose “the militant homosexual attack on common values,” as the Colorado for Family Values business put it.
This team urged voters to move Amendment 2, which would protect against cities or metropolitan areas from creating legal guidelines to shield LGBTQ+ people today and void the ordinances presently in put in cities like Aspen and Boulder. Funded by nationwide conservative teams like Eagle Discussion board and Emphasis on the Family, conservatives properly handed the modification in late 1992. This prompted a nationwide reaction identified as Boycott Colorado. The boycott price the point out around US$120 million in dropped tourism. Boycott organizers hoped to deter other states from passing equivalent laws, but the boycott also threatened queer-owed enterprises in the point out, like the rodeo.
Whilst Modification 2 was overturned by the Supreme Court docket in 1996 and never went into influence, Jakino and many others ended up positioned in the uncomfortable posture of having to inquire their supporters to split boycotts to guarantee their very own financial survival.
In 1993, Jakino wrote to fellow rodeo associations: “We will not be pushed out of Colorado or any other state and we pray that you will be there in even higher quantities as a information to Colorado and the nation – We will combat from discrimination and for our Equal Rights!”
For Jakino and lots of other gay rodeoers, their ongoing existence in the globe of rodeo was a poignant act of resistance.
Alyson Roy., CC BY-ND
Homosexual rodeo’s long term
Getting survived AIDS, homophobic laws and countrywide boycotts, the long term of homosexual rodeo – even these long-standing situations like the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo – is far from confident. Whilst the AIDS epidemic decimated homosexual rodeo in some means, it also captivated people to its ranks who wanted to fundraise for their queer local community. Similarly, homophobic attacks united gay rodeo towards outside opposition.
Since the late 1990s, the Intercontinental Gay Rodeo Association’s story has turned from increase to bust, with additional associations shuttering every 12 months. By 2013, there ended up additional defunct associations than lively ones for the very first time in Intercontinental Homosexual Rodeo Affiliation background, and in 2019 the corporation held just 10 rodeos vs . 22 in its prime. The COVID-19 pandemic was a crushing blow to a group currently struggling for survival.
However there is hope for the long term, as more new a long time have observed 12 rodeos again on the circuit. The Colorado Gay Rodeo Association packed stands at its 40th anniversary rodeo in 2023, but it may have a bumpy trip ahead.
