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IGRA#
First attended a gay rodeo in
Inducted 2023
"I move to..."
"That motion is out of order."
"That doesn't seem fair."
"Well, that's what Robert's Rules says."
In that brief exchange, the then-president and self-appointed parliamentarian of the Nevada Gay Rodeo Association had shut down a member. Benjamin went straightaway to purchase a copy of Robert's Rules of Order and quickly found that the president had been wrong. In that moment, he determined never to let another chairperson misuse the power of parliamentary procedure to shut down any member. And so began the focus of his time with the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA).
Benjamin Avant was born in Dallas, Texas, and raised in rural Northeast Louisiana. Although he was not involved in rodeo while growing up, he did enjoy horseback riding and country-western dance. After a few years working in Dallas post university, Benjamin moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he found a C&W home at Backstreet Saloon and Dancehall. When the Nevada Gay Rodeo Association (NGRA) produced its first rodeo in 1996, Benjamin was hooked, joining NGRA in June of that year.
Benjamin's first interest in NGRA was on the royalty team. He was Mr. NGRA First Runner Up in 1997 and Mr. NGRA 1998. (He even won the unofficial Miss Closet Ball title along the way.) His interest in royalty and fund raising led him to serve on the NGRA board of directors as public relations director, fundraising director, and eventually president and IGRA trustee for a partial term.
Benjamin's personal and career life took him home to Dallas in 2004. He remains, however, a proud lifetime member of the Nevada Gay Rodeo Association.
A couple of months after joining NGRA, Benjamin attended his first IGRA Convention. Trustee Johann Kristensen assigned him to the Bylaws Committee-apparently a position given to the new guy each year! -and again he was hooked, asking for the assignment in subsequent years.
In 1998, IGRA president Linda Frazier asked Benjamin to co-chair the committee for the first time. The next year, when Craig Rouse was elected president, he asked Benjamin to return as chairperson, a position he's been reappointed to every year since, as of this induction.
Early in his role as Bylaws Committee chairperson, Benjamin had a goal to improve the committee and floor experience of the IGRA Convention. In prior years, Convention floor sessions ran late into the evenings on Saturday and Sunday, doing much of the work that the Friday committees should have done.
Benjamin began assigning proposals to individual committees where the expertise was located and having them debate proposals and make recommendations to the floor. He encouraged committee chairpersons and members to update their delegations on the committee's work in order to avoid rehashing it all on the convention floor.
Within a couple of years, the time for the Bylaws and Rodeo Rules Committees' presentations to the floor were significantly reduced to the delight of all the delegates. Today, all IGRA committees are more active and productive, doing detailed work throughout the year and at Convention to keep the floor moving smoothly.
In 2003, when Charley Lanier stepped down as IGRA parliamentarian, Craig Rouse asked Benjamin to fill the role. Motivated by the incident of misuse of the rules and drawing on his experience as NGRA parliamentarian, Benjamin eagerly accepted the position.
Something must have gone right, as each subsequent IGRA president (five additional as of this induction) asked him to return to that position. Benjamin likes to (only half) joke that he's trained six IGRA presidents on the riser at Convention. In reality, he truly enjoys helping presidents and other chairpersons succeed in their role of conducting effective and fair proceedings. He is honored to have been presented with the President's Award by Ed Barry in 2014 for, as he said, "keeping me balanced" in his role as president.
Benjamin hopes to continue serving IGRA in these and similar roles into the future.