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Despite facing homophobia and backlash during its early years and losing hundreds of members to HIV and AIDS in the '80s and '90s, the gay rodeo has endured and built a legacy that its leaders hope to pass on to the next generation.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
OUT Life and Style
Not their first gay rodeo: Celebrating 50 years of queer cowfolks
Contestants and line dancers traveled from across the country to the World Gay Rodeo Finals in Reno, Nevada, to celebrate a half-century of gay rodeo.
Alexander Saites, 35, asked his mentor, Chuck Browning, 61, to be his “puller” at the World Gay Rodeo Finals in Reno, Nevada, this past weekend. It’s a request built on trust, as the puller’s job is to ensure a thick rope is tightly fastened around a roughly 1,000-pound steer while the rider descends into a narrow, metal chute and into position on the thrashing animal.
Browning, who has been involved with the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) for 37 years, said that when he’s pulling for a rider, the first thing he tells them is: “You got to breathe in your nose, out your mouth, and you have to repeat that.”
On Sunday, the brown steer Saites was about to ride threw its body against the side of the chute and then lunged forward, throwing its head in the air and sending saliva flying — a warning of the explosive power that will emerge from the chute as soon as the gate is opened and the steer starts bucking.
Alexander Saites, who met his rodeo mentor, Chuck Browning, six years ago, said he dreamed of riding bulls since he was 8 years old. Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
Saites, who lives in Phoenix and is a three-time gay rodeo world champion steer rider, said that in that moment, there’s a lot of noise around him — the announcer, fans and friends shouting his name — but he doesn’t hear any of it.
“While I’m in that chute, what I hear is Chuck’s voice,” Saites said, adding that he has learned everything he knows from Browning. “We’re having that conversation about what we’re doing in that moment, and it feels calm, it feels serene. I don’t feel anxious. I feel focused, and that’s what’s so exciting.”
This year’s World Gay Rodeo Finals celebrated 50 years of gay rodeo, and the relationship between Browning and Saites captures what IGRA and its member associations have built in that time: a rodeo family where queer people can come together to support one another and compete as their full selves in a historically conservative sport.
"I so want to help them, so want them to be successful, and it's nice because they come back and ask me to be a part of that every time I'm at the rodeo," Chuck Browning, center, said of helping younger contestants like Alexander Saites, right.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
The battle to build gay rodeo
In 1975, Phil Ragsdale, the founder of what would become known as the International Gay Rodeo Association a decade later, came up with the idea to hold a gay rodeo in Reno to raise money for the local senior citizens’ annual Thanksgiving Day feed. However, Ragsdale struggled to find a venue and ranchers who were open to providing livestock for a gay rodeo, and, as a result, he didn’t successfully hold the first event until the following year.
Phil Ragsdale, left, founded what would eventually become known as the International Gay Rodeo Association. He's pictured here with drag performer Keith Ann at an Imperial Court coronation in June 1976.Archives of the IGRA
Ragsdale’s rodeo had all the usual competitions, including team roping and bull riding, and what are now known as “camp events,” like goat dressing, in which a team of two tries to put underwear on a goat as fast as possible, and wild drag, in which one person in a three-person team dresses in drag and mounts a steer and the two others lead the steer across a finish line.
Ragsdale also drew inspiration from a national network of LGBTQ charities called the Imperial Court and started hosting “royalty competitions,” where contestants are judged on their Western attire and how well they represent the rodeo. The royalty and camp events, Ragsdale had long said, were what separated gay rodeo from traditional rodeo.
Contestants travel and compete on the gay rodeo circuit throughout the year to get invitations to compete at finals.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
Despite ongoing struggles in those early years with homophobia from venue owners and ranchers, the gay rodeo circuit continued to grow. In 1983, the signature annual event in Reno drew 12,000 attendees, and in 1994, IGRA and its member associations held 21 gay rodeos across the United States.
But then, HIV and AIDS spread across the country, affecting hundreds of thousands of gay men, including Ragsdale, who died from AIDS-related illness in 1992.
“The HIV pandemic had a tremendous impact, obviously, on gay rodeo, because we lost so many of our members, which has been very hard to recover from,” IGRA President Brian Helandersaid. “We’re just now starting to recover from that, with the younger generation joining, and the older generation, we’re still sort of war-torn from that experience.”
Murmur Tuckness, 70, competed at finals and dedicated all of her rides to her late partner, Sande Miller, who died in 2002. Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
In 1988, the IGRA World Finals didn’t happen because of AIDS-related homophobia, according to longtime members and newspaper clippings shared on a history tour organized by the association last week.
Murmur Tuckness, who was on the history tour, said she trailered two horses more than 20 hours from San Angelo, Texas, to compete in the 1988 finals with her partner at the time. When they finally arrived at the rodeo location in Fallon, Nevada, they discovered a judge had temporarily blocked the event from happening pending a hearing. Once they unloaded their horses at the venue, she recalled, locals drove by with guns and threatened to shoot them and the horses. She and her partner wrapped the animals in dirt-covered blankets to camouflage them in the dark. A sheriff guarded the gates to the ranch, she said.
“It was scary,” Tuckness, now 70, recalled. “You couldn’t do any activity with the horses or you would get arrested.”
A judge ultimately decided that the venue owner didn’t have the necessary permits to hold the event.
The guide of Thursday’s history tour asked attendees to write down what they felt after having heard the stories of gay rodeo members like Tuckness. The messages were displayed alongside IGRA’s history archives at the finals. One read: “Fallon won the battle. We (gay rodeo) won the war.”
Elyssa Ford, a historian and co-author of the book "Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo," said that in order to survive, the IGRA needs to figure out how to use the resurgence in interest in cowboy culture thanks to musicians like Beyoncé and Chappell Roan.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
Expanding the family
Browning first started volunteering at gay rodeos in Phoenix in 1988 after having seen an advertisement for one in a local country western gay bar he frequented called Charlie’s. But he didn’t start competing until 1990, after a doctor diagnosed him with HIV and gave him a prognosis of five years.
“At that time, that’s what they were telling everybody that was diagnosed, that you’ve got five years, you better get everything in order,” Browning said. “I’m like: ‘So what am I going to do? I’m going to start rodeoing.’”
Browning bought a young mare named Sugar and started competing. By 2008, the year he was inducted into the IGRA Hall of Fame, he was the only contestant to qualify for the finals in all 13 gay rodeo events in one year. Over his rodeo career, he has amassed about 300 event buckles and 24 finals championships.
IGRA President Brian Helander, left, and Chuck Browning, right, set a record in goat dressing in 2008 with a time of 7.65 seconds (a good average time is around 10 seconds). Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
Browning and Helander, who is 71 and also lives in Phoenix, started competing together in 1996 and celebrated their 300th rodeo as a team at this weekend’s finals, where they competed in steer decorating, an event in which a pair tries to tie a ribbon around a steer’s tail as fast as possible.
Though Browning and Helander still love competing — and bickered at the finals about who has won more titles — they both said their goal in recent years has been to mentor and support younger competitors, like Saites.
“Whether it be an official, be a volunteer, be a timer, scorekeeper or even be a contestant, we’re looking to bring anybody in that’s interested, that might want to compete, and bring them into our wonderful family,” Browning said.
“We've come so far from when I first came out,” Kody Kay, 63, a transgender man who has been involved in gay rodeo since 2012, said. “I wouldn’t be here if it was the same climate as 13 years ago. It shows that they want to move forward.”Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News This year, 88 contestants competed at the World Gay Rodeo Finals, which featured three days of Royalty competitions, four days of country western line dancing and two days of rodeo.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News Diana "Big D" Getko, 28, competed at finals in chute dogging, an event in which contestants try to wrestle a steer to the ground. Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News Hundreds of young people filled two large halls reserved for the finals’ country western dancing events in the evenings.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News The movement required for roping is all in the wrist, according to Katie Shaw, a professional roping trainer.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
The future of gay rodeo
Katie Shaw, 34, was among the younger competitors at the finals in Reno. She got involved in gay rodeo after having volunteered as a farrier, shoeing horses, for a rodeo in Phoenix in 2022.
“I didn’t actually do any work, but my wife and I went down and just spent the whole weekend and watched the rodeo,” Shaw said. “It’s my community. I am a quintessential horse girl. My whole life is horses, so being around queer cowboys and cowgirls, that’s just my jam.”
Shaw, who lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, grew up doing rodeo in Texas and is also a professional roping trainer. She qualified for this weekend’s world finals in nine of the 13 events.
Katie Shaw, 34, practices roping in the mornings before competitions because she's slightly superstitious about it, she said.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
On Sunday, the second day of the finals, it was 30 degrees and sunny at 7 a.m. when she fed the three horses she trailered to Reno. She then went through her pre-competition routine, which she said she’s slightly superstitious about: Still in her pajamas, she picked up her ropes from her trailer and set up a “dummy” steer head and a set of fake steer legs in the parking lot, and she practiced roping them.
Shaw came in third for all-around cowgirl after her points were added up from all nine of her events.
Her one criticism of the gay rodeo? “It’s totally a sausagefest,” she said, laughing and noting that the majority of the members are gay men, and she said she would like to see more lesbians in leadership.
“No matter what you think or who you are, even us being straight, everybody's friends,” Chris Rankin, 38, one of the heterosexual contestants at finals, said.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
Helander said more young queer women have joined the gay rodeo over the years, though it’s still more than 60% men. The “straight” rodeo circuit was largely male-dominated until recent years, when more women have joined the sport. Still, unlike gay rodeo, which allows women to compete in all of its events, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the largest rodeo organization in the world, doesn’t allow women to compete in roughstock events like bull riding.
Though IGRA is open to all competitors, including heterosexual people, some said it could be more inclusive of trans and nonbinary people.
In 2000, IGRA became one of the earliest sporting associations to institute a rule allowing trans people to compete under the gender categories with which they identify. Two years ago, the organization created the Mx. IGRA Royalty title for nonbinary and gender-nonconforming contestants, Helander said. In the last few years, the organization also enacted a rule allowing trans women and trans men to compete for Ms. and Mr. IGRA, categories previously reserved for cisgender contestants (trans contestants were permitted to compete only under two corresponding drag categories).
All gay rodeos that are officially sanctioned by IGRA are required to be nonprofits and raise money for charities of their choice. Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
Nonbinary rodeo contestants are still required to compete with either cowboys or cowgirls, though Helander said IGRA has removed the requirement to choose “male” or “female” in the registration system.
Jace Ritchey, 29, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, attended the evening line-dancing events. They said that they grew up with chickens and goats as a kid but that when they realized they were queer, pop culture told them that they had to move to a big city in order to exist. Gay rodeo, they said, is the one of the first times that they’ve been able to be outside with ranch animals in the dirt among queer community.
Jace Ritchey said they want to help the gay rodeo be more inclusive of nonbinary competitors.Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
They competed at their first gay rodeo in Duncan Mills, California, in September and won a rookie belt buckle. Despite being misgendered during their debut competition and not feeling completely understood by the broader gay rodeo community, they said they were enthusiastically welcomed by the elders and vowed to keep coming back.
“It’s their legacy, and I want to lift that up,” Ritchey said. “I didn’t know a world like gay rodeo existed until I was deep in it, and I’ll be damned if I’m not a part of the continued legacy of carving further space for those whose lives depend on it.”
"I just had this sense of accomplishment for the whole organization," IGRA President Brian Helander said of this year's finals Saturday. "It's really something."Jesse McClary and Allie Leepson for NBC News
