The Colorado Gay Rodeo Association has been hosting the Gay Rodeo every year since 1983, making it the longest running event of its kind in history.
Their flagship event, the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo in Denver, is part of a rodeo circuit that sometimes stretches across the United States and even into Canada.
Though these rodeos have faced cultural backlash, Denver’s rodeo tradition will live on with its 41st anniversary on July 12-13, 2024.
We explored the origins of the rodeo for our book, Slap Leather: Queer Cowfolks of Gay Rodeo, which also explores how gay rodeo participants were on the front lines of fighting discrimination and the AIDS crisis.
Reno’s Roots
Gay rodeo didn’t start in the Rocky Mountains, but in another mountain range further west: the Sierra Nevada.
Businessman Phil Ragsdale organized the first gay rodeo in Reno, Nevada in 1976 as a fundraiser for local community organizations.
When arena owners and livestock producers learned the event was for queer people, Ragsdale faced difficulties renting space and animals.
Still, Ragsdale’s first rodeo went off with few hitches, and what soon became known as the National Reno Gay Rodeo has grown from a few hundred spectators and participants that first year to an annual event that sometimes draws more than 10,000 people.
In 1981, John King opened Charlie’s Denver, a gay country-western bar run by Wayne Jaquino. The bar provided a place for cowfolk to gather and form community, including queer ranchers, rodeo athletes, and country-western enthusiasts of all genders and sexual orientations. The friends they met at the bar turned out in droves for the 1982 Reno Rodeo. In 1983, Denver hosted its own rodeo, which they called the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo.
The Denver rodeo was the first gay rodeo held outside of Nevada, but others soon joined in, and by the end of 1986 four more rodeos were held in Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Dallas.
Colorado Leadership
Thanks to King and Jaquino’s leadership, the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo helped other gay rodeos get off the ground across the United States and Canada.
After the Reno rodeo failed and eventually folded in 1984, members of the Rocky Mountain Area Rodeo joined forces with groups from Texas, California and Arizona to found the International Gay Rodeo Association in 1985. Mr. Jaquino took the helm as the association’s first president.
Jaquino was especially interested in bringing professionalism to gay rodeo, but that emphasis was always balanced with fun, extravagance, and sexual freedom. In 1982, Jaquino wrote a letter to Ragsdale outlining his goal of promoting “professionalism in gay rodeo and the enjoyment of members and rodeo fans.”
Rocky Mountain Controversy
The emphasis on professionalism has not protected the International Gay Rodeo Association from anti-LGBTQ+ backlash.
The Colorado Gay Rodeo Association explained to its members in a 1988 newsletter that the year it first hosted the Denver Rodeo, it was rejected by eight arenas because it was an LGBTQ+ organization, and few current arenas agreed to host it. The association called on its members to prepare for such opposition and come together to “be a constructive force for the well-being of the gay community.”
As AIDS spread across the US in the 1980s, anti-LGBTQ+ hostility became increasingly intense. While the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association fought to remain relevant and stay afloat, its members were literally fighting for their lives. Two of the group’s founding members died of AIDS in 1986, and the group turned its fundraising efforts towards supporting the HIV-AIDS crisis.
As the Christian Right grew in the 1980s and 1990s, Colorado saw an intense campaign against what Colorado for Family Values described as “a gay extremist attack on traditional values.”
The group urged voters to pass Amendment 2, which would have prohibited towns and cities from enacting laws protecting LGBTQ+ people and nullified ordinances already in place in cities such as Aspen and Boulder. With financial support from national conservative groups such as Eagle Forum and Focus on the Family, conservatives successfully passed Amendment 2 in late 1992, which sparked a national response known as the “Boycott of Colorado.” The boycott cost Colorado an estimated $120 million in lost tourism. Boycott organizers also sought to stop other states from passing similar laws, but the boycott also threatened queer-related businesses in the state, including rodeos.
Though the Second Amendment was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1996 and never went into effect, Jaquino and others were left in the awkward position of having to ask their supporters to end the boycott in order to ensure their own financial survival.
In 1993, Jaquino wrote to other rodeo associations: “We will not be driven out of Colorado or any other state. We pray that you will join us in greater numbers as a message to Colorado and the country. We oppose discrimination and will fight for equal rights!”
For Jaquino and many other gay rodeo athletes, continuing to exist in the rodeo world has been an inspiring act of resistance.
The Future of Gay Rodeo
Having survived AIDS, homophobic laws, and national boycotts, the future of gay rodeo is by no means guaranteed, even for long-running events like the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo. The AIDS epidemic in some ways devastated gay rodeo, but at the same time it attracted those wanting to raise money for the queer community. Similarly, homophobic attacks have united gay rodeo against outside opposition.
Since the late 1990s, the International Gay Rodeo Association has gone from boom to bust, with many associations closing each year. In 2013, for the first time in the association’s history, dissolved associations outnumbered active associations, and in 2019, the number of rodeos dropped from a peak of 22 to just 10. The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a major blow to organizations already struggling to survive.
But with 12 rodeos returning to the circuit in recent years, there’s hope for the future — the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association is holding a sold-out 40th anniversary rodeo in 2023 — but the road ahead may be bumpy.
Rebecca Schofield is Associate Professor of History at the University of Idaho and Elissa Ford is Associate Professor of History at Northwest Missouri State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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