When you talk about the Texas Gay Rodeo Association, it’s like being Evelyn Mulwray in Chinatown: It’s a sports group! It’s a service organization! It’s a sports group annnddd a service organization!
And it is. This being Texas, cowboys are bound to proliferation, even in the gay community. But unlike The Village People’s cowboy, who probably never came closer to a horse than the merry-go-round, gay cowboys in Texas are apt to have grown up on a ranch, ropin’, ridin’ and putting panties on a goat.
OK, scratch that last one. That’s one of the camp events you’ll find at TGRA events, but most of the cowboys and cowgirls who show up to these rodeos have mad skills.
Founded in the summer of 1983, TGRA gave gay people an outlet to be themselves decades before Brokeback Mountain made it commonplace to think of sexual orientation as having little to do with countrified interests.
It’s biggest local event is in Fort Worth every spring, but TGRA (and North Texas) also play host to the International Gay Rodeo Association’s finals, held each fall here. It’s a lot of cowboys having a lot of fun.
But there’s also that service aspect. TGRA “royalty” are elected each year, and bring their considerable talents to fundraising, primarily (but not exclusively) Texas-based AIDS services organizations. It’s been that way since Day One. Call it the cowboy code.