Colorado is home to the oldest gay rodeo on the planet.

The Colorado Gay Rodeo Association has hosted a gay rodeo yearly since 1983, making it the longest running event of its kind in history.

Their flagship event, the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo in Denver, is an element of a rodeo tour that has at times spanned all the United States and into Canada.

Despite the cultural resistance these rodeos faced, the legacy of the Denver Rodeo lives on because it celebrates its forty first Anniversary on 12-13 July 2024.

We researched the origins of this rodeo for our book, “Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx on the Gay Rodeo”, It also examines how gay rodeo riders played a pioneering role within the fight against discrimination and the AIDS crisis.

Roots in Reno

The gay rodeo doesn’t have its origins within the Rocky Mountains, but in one other mountain range further west – the Sierra Nevada.

Businessman Phil Ragsdale held the first gay rodeo 1976 in Reno, Nevada, as a fundraiser for local people organizations.

Ragsdale had some difficulty renting space and animals when the world owners and ranchers learned that the event was for queer people.

Nevertheless, Ragsdale's first rodeo went largely easily. Soon generally known as the National Reno Gay Rodeo, The event expanded from the few hundred spectators and participants who got here in the primary yr, to an annual event that sometimes attracted greater than 10,000 people.

In 1981 John King open #18 of 21 places to eat in Denvera gay country western bar run by Wayne JakinoThe venue offered space for Cow Fox – or queer ranchers, rodeo riders and country western enthusiasts of all genders and sexual orientations – to assemble and form a community. Friends who met on the bar traveled en masse to the Reno Rodeo in 1982. 1983 held their very own rodeo in Denverand called it the Regional Rodeo within the Rocky Mountains.

The Denver Rodeo was the primary gay rodeo to happen outside of Nevada, but others soon followed, with 4 more rodeos until the top of 1986 in Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Dallas.

Colorado's leadership

Thanks to the leadership of King and Jakino, the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo helped spawn other gay rodeos throughout the United States and Canada.

When Reno's rodeo faltered and eventually collapsed in 1984, members of the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo formed the International Gay Rodeo Association in 1985. Jakino took over as the primary president of the organization.

Jakino was particularly eager about bringing a certain professionalism to gay rodeo, although this emphasis was at all times balanced with fun, kitsch and sexual freedom. In 1982, Jakino wrote a letter to Ragsdale outlining his goal to advertise “the professionalism of gay rodeo and the fun of our members and rodeo fans alike.”

Controversy within the Rocky Mountains

This 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 in the primary yr the group hosted the Denver Rodeo, eight arenas turned them away because they were an LGBTQ+ organization – and that their current arena was barely willing to host them. The group urged its members to arrange for this type of resistance and are available together to “be a constructive force for the good of the gay community!”

Anti-LGBTQ+ hostility The disputes became more heated within the Nineteen Eighties because the AIDS epidemic spread across the country. While the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association struggled to stay visible and present, its members were literally fighting for his or her lives. Two of the group's founding members died of AIDS in 1986and the organization focused its fundraising efforts on helping combat the HIV-AIDS crisis.

With the Spread of the Christian Right In the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties, Colorado experienced intense campaigns against the “militant homosexual attack on traditional values,” because the The organization Colorado for Family Values ​​​​put it this manner:.

This group called on voters to Amendment 2which might prevent cities and towns from passing laws protecting LGBTQ+ people and override the ordinances already in place in cities like Aspen and Boulder. Funded by national conservative groups like Eagle Forum and Focus on the Family, conservatives successfully passed the amendment in late 1992. This sparked a nationwide response called Boycott ColoradoThe boycott cost the state around 120 million US dollars in lost tourism. Boycott organizers hoped to discourage other states from passing similar laws, however the boycott also threatened queer businesses within the state, including the rodeo.

While Amendment 2 of Supreme Court in 1996 and never got here into force, Jakino and others were left within the awkward position of getting to call on their supporters to interrupt the boycotts as a way to ensure their very own economic survival.

In 1993, Jakino wrote to his fellow rodeo riders: “We will not be driven out of Colorado or any other state, and we pray that you will be there in even greater numbers as a message to Colorado and the nation: We will fight against discrimination and for our equality!”

For Jakino and plenty of other gay rodeo riders, their continued presence within the rodeo world was a poignant act of resistance.

The way forward for gay rodeo

Having survived AIDS, homophobic laws, and national boycotts, the gay rodeo's future – even at events as wealthy in tradition because the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo – is way from assured. While the AIDS epidemic decimated the gay rodeo in some ways, it also attracted people seeking to raise funds for his or her queer community. Likewise, homophobic attacks united the gay rodeo against outside opposition.

Since the late Nineties, the history of the International Gay Rodeo Association has modified from boom to bustwith more associations closing every year. In 2013, for the primary time within the history of the International Gay Rodeo Association, there have been more defunct associations than energetic ones, and by 2019, the organization was hosting just 10 rodeos, down from 22 at its peak. The COVID-19 pandemic was a serious blow to a bunch already struggling to survive.

But there’s hope for the longer term, because in recent times 12 Rodeos back on the race trackThe Colorado Gay Rodeo Association had packed stands at its fortieth anniversary rodeo in 2023, nevertheless it could possibly be in for a bumpy ride.