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The Bay Area Reporter, which is San Francisco’s LGBT weekly newspaper, published two of our letters in response to its story about the controversy surrounding gay rodeos. On September 11th, TheirTurn wrote a story about gay rodeos from an animal rights point of view.

If you feel strongly about certain issues, please submit letters to the editor when a media outlet reports on them. These letters provide us with an opportunity to convey the message points about animal abuse that are so often missing from the stories.

At the Gay Rodeo near San Francisco this weekend, hundreds of LGBTs will applaud and cheer as their gay brothers and sisters wrestle terrified cows to the ground and then twist their necks in an event called “chute dogging.”

In a statement to San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter, The International Gay Rodeo Association defends chute dogging, bucking, goat dressing and other abusive events that celebrate the “traditional western lifestyle” by saying, “The animals of gay rodeo are well cared for and loved.”

Andrew Zollman of LBGT Compassion, a San Francisco-based group that protests the rodeo, compares the abuse of these animals to anti-gay bullying: “Instead of becoming oppressors and abusers of others who are also different and powerless, we should show compassion and empathy for them. The least we can do for farm animals is to not subject them to additional suffering and torment for the gratuitous purpose of our own entertainment.”

1. Learn more about rodeo cruelty at LGBT Compassion

2. Submit a letter to the Bay Area Reporter (news@ebar.com) expressing your point of view. Write “letter to the editor” in the subject line, and include an address and phone number.

3. Post a comment on the Facebook wall and/or email the International Gay Rodeo Association: askigra@igra.com

The Bluffdale rodeo in Utah has cancelled its Barnyard Bonanza in which “little cowboys and cowgirls” chase chickens, kittens, goats, rabbits and other small animals. According to advertisements for the event, “Whatever you catch, you get to take home.” On Facebook, the rodeo chairwoman posted a request for unwanted pets to be donated to the event. Animal rights activists, who “were aghast that small animals that had been pets would find themselves in this terrifying environment,” complained loudly enough that the organizers decided to cancel the animal chasing event and distribute stuffed animals to the children instead.

The rodeo advertisement should have read: “Whoever you catch, you get to take home” instead of “Whatever you catch.”  Of course, the rodeo should have never been scheduled in the first place because chasing terrified farm animals and companion animals for sport is barbaric, as is teaching children that this type of activity is acceptable. Learn more about rodeo cruelty and see how you can help stop them.