Fifty miles east of Reno, Nevada, on the edge of Fallon, a small agricultural and military town, John King looked across a noisy highway toward the ranch where a legendary rodeo never took place.
Thirty-seven years ago, in October 1988, that year’s Gay Rodeo Finals contestants and organizers were refused entry to the ranch, blocked by then-Churchill County Sheriff Bill Lawry. “It was the first time I’d seen raw, undeniable hate,” King said.
A judge’s injunction hung on the ranch gate, and the sheriff, his shotgun and a group of deputies stood between the rodeo contestants, organizers and their horses. King recalled that for several tense hours, the crowd pushed toward the gates but was met with heated threats of violence. Eventually, people were allowed to load their horses and leave.
“It was our Stonewall,” King said.
The 1988 standoff in Fallon marked the culmination of a monthslong battle between the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) and its venue managers and the anti-gay activists who had mobilized to shut down that year’s rodeo in Reno, where gay rodeo was invented.
In response, the rodeo decided to relocate to private land in Fallon, but were barred. Gay rodeo did not die, though; instead, the finals were redistributed across several cities. But the incident left a black mark on northern Nevada.
In mid-October this year, 50 years after the first Gay Rodeo, the finals came home to Reno. A couple days before, attendees took a bus out to Fallon for a history tour at the site of the standoff.
I stood around with Andy Siekkinen, a tall man in a big hat with a handlebar mustache who is the rodeo’s press person and a competitor. The president of IGRA, Brian Helander, walked up and pulled his hand from his jean pocket to shake.
“We’re not out here in anger,” Helander said, “It’s about understanding … and closure.”
“And triumph,” Siekkinen added with a slight smile.
“And triumph,” Helander agreed. “We’re still here.”
On the roadside across from the ranch gate, organizer Brian Rodgers held a poster-sized printout of the injunction that halted the rodeo 37 years ago. A crowd of about 50 people repeated after him, “We remember, we honor, we continue.” Then Rodgers rolled up that symbol of bigotry and pain and taped it shut with rainbow-print duct tape, sealing the whole thing in the past, closing that chapter.
As we filed back onto the bus, everybody grabbed a Pabst or a Bud from a big cooler. “Thanks to everybody who came,” said Rodgers from the aisle. “Drink your beers. Let’s rodeo!”
The Georgia Satellites’ song Keep Your Hands to Yourself played as we motored up the freeway back to Reno.
TWO DAYS LATER, the high metal ceiling of the Reno Livestock Events Center echoed with excited voices as a few hundred folks filtered in before lunch, grabbing seats as the calf roping on foot event kicked off. Many wore Western wear: blue jeans and snap-button shirts; others donned more glamorous displays: fringe, bolo ties, denim jackets with Western scenes stitched across the back. The air smelled like fresh dirt and horses, except by the snack stand where it smelled like a deep fryer and weak coffee.
Calf-roping contestants lined up by the calf chute, swinging lassos until the gate opened and a calf emerged, ideally into the open loop of their rope. Murmur Tuckness, a rodeo veteran who was at the standoff in 1988 and competed in bull riding as early as 1981, won best time in the women’s category, lassoing her calf in the blink of an eye.
During the Grand Entry — the rodeo’s ceremonial start — the Canadian, U.S. and Nevada state flags whipped past, held by riders on horseback as the inclusive Pride flag joined them at a full gallop. Rodeo royalty and contestants from all the regional gay rodeo associations paraded from the roping chutes to the bucking chutes.
The solo events were broken up by gender, with registration based on self-identification. Nonbinary and trans athletes are welcome to compete in their chosen gender category, making this one of the rare sporting organizations that encourages trans participation. Unlike traditional rodeo, women can compete in bronc, steer and bull riding, and mixed gender teams contend in the roping events. Cisgender and straight folks stood shoulder to shoulder with everybody else.
“Drink your beers. Let’s rodeo!”
I’ve covered rodeos before, from big corporate ones to the ranch-hand variety in small Nevada towns. Here, the atmosphere behind the chutes was different: The steely, competitive glares of the young and the scared were replaced by goofy smiles, pep talks and flashes of flamboyance and machismo.
“It’s a level playing field,” said Mark Allen Smith, an athlete and rodeo royalty contestant in the nonbinary category in a light denim shirt and a trim gray goatee. “I can walk out there with my rodeo partner Jen and compete on the same events.”
That day, Smith took a hefty blow from a wily steer in the steer-decorating event, and afterward headed to the downtown casino, the Silver Legacy, for the other half of the Gay Rodeo: a Western dance competition and a royalty contest, where Ms., Miss, Mr., Mx., and MsTer International Gay Rodeo Association would be crowned.
The carpeted casino basement was packed with big men in cowboy hats, butch cowgirls, drag queens, everyone in between, and the audience whooped and hollered for their friends on stage. Smith emerged in full makeup, a brunette wig, long skirt, trimmed goatee and black sash. As the clocks in the casino sportsbook hit midnight, Smith took the title Mx. International Gay Rodeo Association, a crown they will hold for a year.
After the sashes were handed out, the party raged: Teams of line dancers and cloggers and spinning two-steppers appeared from the back of the ballroom and danced deep into the night.
THE FIRST-EVER gay rodeo was organized in 1976 in Reno by Phil Ragsdale, an early leader in the local chapter of the Imperial Court System, a grassroots network of LGBTQ organizations. He wanted to raise money for the Senior Citizens Thanksgiving Feed, and, being in Nevada, he threw a rodeo. In 1976, 125 people attended; in 1980, 10,000.
By 1988, there were IGRA chapters across the country, and the Gay Rodeo Finals were scheduled to take place that year at Lawlor Events Center at the University of Nevada, Reno. The AIDS crisis was sweeping across the LGBTQ community to devastating effect, and conservative Christian activists were mobilizing nationwide, pushing bigoted stereotypes about the disease. In Reno, local activists pressured politicians to cancel the event.
Rather than cancel it outright, the university claimed there were issues with the contract and pulled out of the agreement. The ACLU pushed back, but ultimately the IGRA decided to choose an alternative venue — the rodeo arena on private land in Fallon.
But a secondary cascade of legal troubles followed, and District Court Judge Archie E. Blake filed an injunction banning it, claiming the private venue wasn’t permitted for a rodeo — even though, according to Rodgers, it had hosted others without issue. The episode broke Reno’s title as home of the Gay Rodeo.
Growing up here, I barely knew about any of this, let alone that we shared the same birthplace: It had been wiped from the map of this place.
In 1988, Reno blew it. It could have laid claim to something special, could have supported a rich community of creative people who invented something new. Instead, it ran them out of town.
Reno is a city I love.
But I also know that it can be self-destructive that way — falling for the billionaire’s big talk, the promise of jobs or clout or riches: double or nothing every time, even as it bets the house on a losing hand.
It can ignore, or even sabotage, its organic, homegrown strengths just to chase some shiny mirage on the horizon.
Reno can ignore, or even sabotage, its organic, homegrown strengths just to chase some shiny mirage on the horizon.
On Sunday, the final day, the air was crisp, the sunlight sharp: a perfect Nevada day, the kind I’ve looked forward to every hot summer of my life.
Gay rodeo has a lot in common with traditional rodeo, but with the added flair of “camp events” like goat dressing, a crowd favorite, where contestants race across the arena to put underwear on a goat, and steer decorating, where teams of two try to subdue a steer long enough to tie a ribbon on his tail.
Perhaps the most chaotic camp event is the Wild Drag Race. Each three-person team consists of one man, one woman and one drag queen, or simply “drag.” The drag stands on a chalk line 70 feet from the chutes. One contestant is given a rope that’s tied to a steer, and when the chutes open, the two team members work to coax the steer past the chalk line and then stop him. When stopped, the drag jumps on the steer’s back and must ride back across the line to win. It’s a hilarious and at times dangerous event that often results in the drag getting bucked off and one of the other teammates dragged across the dirt, clinging desperately to the rope.
Between events, I wandered the concourse. Small booths sold Western wear, cowboy boots, tie-dyed shirts, various penis-shaped objects. One exhibit showcased the history of Gay Rodeo with posters, plaques, medals, ropes and photo albums detailing the story of the sport and how it got to where it is today.
Taking it all in, I could imagine another timeline where the annual Reno Gay Rodeo had become part of the city’s fabric, a wild event the town was proud of, excited for, that guards against the moralist, condescending comments from outsiders. Reno is also a city that loves a second chance. Maybe it’s not too late.
The rodeo ended with a final bull ride as Lil Jon’s Turn Down For What blared. The rider stayed on for the full 6 seconds. And that was it: The announcers thanked everyone, and Roy Rogers and Dale Evans crooned Happy Trails. The arena emptied into the dusk. Somewhere behind us, back inside, an organizer placed the rolled-up injunction into a box to be filed away with the rest of the archives.
An artifact of the past.
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This article appeared in the December 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Reno’s Gay Rodeo is back.”
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