Not their first gay rodeo: Celebrating 50 years of queer cowfolks

The battle to construct homosexual rodeo

In 1975, Phil Ragsdale, the founding father of what would develop into generally known as the Worldwide Homosexual Rodeo Affiliation a decade later, got here up with the concept to carry a homosexual rodeo in Reno to lift cash for the native senior residents’ annual Thanksgiving Day feed. Nonetheless, Ragsdale struggled to discover a venue and ranchers who had been open to offering livestock for a homosexual rodeo, and, in consequence, he didn’t efficiently maintain the primary occasion till the next yr.

Ragsdale’s rodeo had all the same old competitions, together with group roping and bull using, and what at the moment are generally known as “camp occasions,” like goat dressing, wherein a group of two tries to place underwear on a goat as quick as attainable, and wild drag, wherein one particular person in a three-person group clothes in drag and mounts a steer and the 2 others lead the steer throughout a end line.

Ragsdale additionally drew inspiration from a nationwide community of LGBTQ charities known as the Imperial Court docket and began internet hosting “royalty competitions,” the place contestants are judged on their Western apparel and the way effectively they characterize the rodeo. The royalty and camp occasions, Ragsdale had lengthy mentioned, had been what separated homosexual rodeo from conventional rodeo.

Regardless of ongoing struggles in these early years with homophobia from venue house owners and ranchers, the homosexual rodeo circuit continued to develop. In 1983, the signature annual occasion in Reno drew 12,000 attendees, and in 1994, IGRA and its member associations held 21 homosexual rodeos throughout america.

However then, HIV and AIDS unfold throughout the nation, affecting tons of of hundreds of homosexual males, together with Ragsdale, who died from AIDS-related sickness in 1992.

“The HIV pandemic had an incredible affect, clearly, on homosexual rodeo, as a result of we misplaced so a lot of our members, which has been very exhausting to recuperate from,” IGRA President Brian Helander mentioned. “We’re simply now beginning to recuperate from that, with the youthful era becoming a member of, and the older era, we’re nonetheless type of war-torn from that have.”