Living in Leather

National Leather Association International is a contemporary BDSM organization based in the United States with chapters in various cities in the United States and Canada. Along with similar organizations, the NLA brought together gay leathermen, kinky heterosexuals and bisexuals, SM lesbians and transgender sadomasochists into a national integrated organization. When it formed, prosecutions against sadomasochistic media and even individuals who practiced it consensually and in private, such as in the 1990 UK Operation Spanner case, had increased. Organisations such as the National Leather Association were a response to this environment, and the NLA played a leading role in raising funds for the Spanner defendants.

Competing in the 1986 International Mr. Leather (IML) contest inspired Steve Maidhof to organize a conference for members of the growing SM, leather, and fetish community. Unlike IML, this conference would focus on education and political activism. To host this conference, named Living in Leather, Maidhof recruited several friends and leading members of Seattle's leather community including: Cookie Andrews-Hunt, Wayne Gloege, Billy Jefferson, Jan Lyon, George Nelson, and Vik Stump. Together, they formed the National Leather Association (NLA), which officially incorporated in the summer of 1986. In October, they hosted the first Living in Leather (LIL) conference in Seattle. It was a rousing success that inspired SM/leather activism around the country. LIL became an annual event and sparked the formation of NLA chapters in Vancouver and Portland. While publicly described as a gay/lesbian organization, a growing number of heterosexuals attended LIL conferences and joined the NLA, which became a pansexual organization. From its origins, the NLA was a meeting place for a diverse array of people exploring the boundaries of their sexuality. At the request of members living outside the United States, the organization changed its name to "National Leather Association - International" in 1991.

The NLA helped organize the leather conference that preceded the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Along with the creation of the NLA itself, that conference sparked the infamous Dallas Conference, which met in February 1988 to discuss creating a national SM/leather/fetish organization. Best remembered for vitriolic arguments that exposed divisions in the community between men and women, the East Coast and West Coast, old clubs and new, and those not affiliated with any club, the conference created a new organization named Safe Sane Consensual Adults (SSCA). Burdened by the political infighting of Dallas, the SSCA failed to gain support and merged with the NLA, the only functioning, national BDSM organization. Over the past 26 years, roughly three-dozen NLA chapters formed, though only about a dozen of these are currently active.

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