This is a video recording [in two parts] of the 3rd Annual Big Horn Rodeo in Las Vegas, held March 6-8, 1998. For a history of the gay rodeo in Nevada, see Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 196-204. [Part 1: 00:00:00 - 01:30:22; Part 2: 00:00:00 - 01:29:22]

Titled, The Rhetoric of Intolerance: An Open-Letter Video to Pat Robertson from Dr. Mel White, this video provides a point-by-point destruction of Robertson's homophobic social and religious paradigm. Throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, Pat Robertson--founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network [CBN], Regent University, and the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, and one of the loudest voices in the Religious Right--spread a relentlessly homophobic message through his television program, The 700 Club. Mel White, a closeted gay man who ghost wrote autobiographies for such homophobic Christian fundamentalists as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, came out in 1994 and became an outspoken queer activist associated with the Metropolitan Community Church. For documentary materials associated with The Rhetoric of Intolerance ..., see MS-00802, box 8 ["Discrimination - The Rhetoric of Intolerance"] in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Special Collections Department. [00:00:00 - 00:30:03]

Jahna Steele, aka Jahna Reis [d. January 24, 2008], was a renowned transgender performer in Las Vegas whose reputation became international through the 1990s and 2000s. Steele hosted The World's Most Beautiful Transsexual Contest at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in 2004. For information on Steele, see Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 153-154. For Steele's obituary, see the Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 29, 2008, p. 4B. Also see "Jahna Steele: Woman of Steele" [QVegas, December 2005, 34] and "Jahna Steele" [Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 10, 2010, 4J]. This videotape is a promotional item of Steele's entertainment career. [00:00:00 - 00:06:38]

Titled, 70s Fever, this videotape records a stage production/dance party with a 1970s disco theme in an unidentified Las Vegas nightclub. The production includes several lip-synched performances by female impersonators. [00:00:00 - 00:25:14]

The Equal Right to Marry Project in Las Vegas was established in 1996 through the LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada to fight for marriage equality. One of the organization's first events was a panel discussion at the Clark County Library featuring Evan Wolfson, an attorney with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. This videotape of the panel discussion is Part 1 of 2. For a short history of the Equal Right to Marry Project in Las Vegas, see Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 274-275. Still photographs of this event may be found in photograph collection 00263 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Special Collections Department, photo nos. 2728-2737. Oral history interviews with panel members Dan Hinkley, Lori Lipman Brown, Lee Plotkin, and Mike Mas are also deposited in the Special Collections Department. [00:00:00 - 01:53:10]

The Equal Right to Marry Project in Las Vegas was established in 1996 through the LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada to fight for marriage equality. One of the organization's first events was a panel discussion at the Clark County Library featuring Evan Wolfson, an attorney with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. This videotape of the panel discussion is Part 2 of 2. For a short history of the Equal Right to Marry Project in Las Vegas, see Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 274-275. Still photographs of this event may be found in photograph collection 00263 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Special Collections Department, photo nos. 2728-2737. Oral history interviews with panel members Dan Hinkley, Lori Lipman Brown, Lee Plotkin, and Mike Mas are also deposited in the Special Collections Department. [00:00:00: - 00:38:33]

Question 2 was an anti-same-sex marriage constitutional amendment passed by popular referendum in Nevada in 2000 and 2002. This video records a debate among Richard Ziser, director of the referendum's sponsoring organization, the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage in Nevada [CPM], and pro-same-sex marriage activists including Lee Plotkin and his husband, Robert Smith; Vincent Frey, then executive director of the LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada; former Nevada State Senator and sponsor of legislation overturning Nevada's sodomy law in 1993, Lori Lipman Brown; and Gary Peck, president of the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] in Nevada. The program which hosted this debate was POV Vegas, a half-hour public affairs program which debuted on July 12, 1999, sponsored by the Las Vegas Sun newspaper and broadcast on Las Vegas ONE, a 24-hour local news network which was a collaboration among the Las Vegas Sun, KLAS-TV Channel 8, and Prime Cable [Prime was purchased in 1998 by Cox Cable/Cox Communications], on channels 1 and 39. The general manager of Las Vegas ONE was Robert "Bob" Stoldal. The network operated from April 6, 1998 through January 9, 2010. For the story of Question 2, see Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 103, 257, 273, 277-302, 309-312. For the history of POV Vegas, see "Sun to Launch Daily Television News Talk Show" [Las Vegas Sun, June 27, 1999]. Oral history interviews with Lee Plotkin and Lori Lipman Brown are depoisited in the Special Collections Department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. [00:00:00 - 00:26:24]