Two. The Leather Pride Flag was first carried publicly by K.T. Chase, a member of the National Leather Association’s Portland chapter.

Various elements of DeBlase’s original Leather Pride Flag design have appeared in a host of related emblems, including a BDSM Rights Flag developed in Great Britain.

In 1999, when the National Leather Association’s Florida chapter hosted Living in Leather 14 in Fort Lauderdale, chapter members wrote a Leather Pledge of Allegiance, which they presented to DeBlase. It reads: “I pledge allegiance to the Leather Pride Flag, and the union of leather people for which it stands, with safety, sanity and consent for all.”

An accomplished teacher and museum professional with a doctorate in biology, DeBlase began writing erotic BDSM stories under the pen name Fledermaus in the mid-1970s. He became a member of the Chicago Hellfire Club, the first men’s BDSM organization, around the same time, and devoted himself to learning about BDSM and sharing what he’d learned with others.

Bennington Flagfor sale

DeBlase sent Shepherd his drawings and she produced a flag which her partner, K.T. Chase, then president of the National Leather Association’s Portland chapter, carried in the parade. K.T. Chase won the Ms. NLA Contest in 1992 and later served as female co-chair of the National Leather Association. Despite its name, the National Leather Association was founded as a BDSM organization.

Over the next few years, DeBlase emerged as the BDSM community’s premier educator, a status he retained until his death on 21 July 2000. DeBlase gave educational demonstrations across the United States, launched DungeonMaster magazine, the first publication devoted solely to teaching BDSM technique.

Defiance 76flag

In his Drummer article presenting the flag, DeBlase claimed a copyright on the design. Anyone could use the flag for non-commercial purposes, even printing it on pins and T-shirts, as long as these were “distributed free or sold at cost” or used to raise funds for non-profit causes. Anyone seeking to sell flag merchandise at profit, though, was supposed to get DeBlase’s permission, and many did, including Chuck Higgins, the Co-Chair of the National Leather Association, who had a Leather Pride Flag stitched to the back of his vest (the first to do so) and sold Leather Pride Flag bumper stickers.

As DeBlase explained, that would have taken too long and produced no end of recriminations and finger-pointing by advocates of unchosen flag designs.

76 u.s.flag meaning

Yet so many people violated DeBlase’s terms and sold flag merchandise at profit that DeBlase soon ended his efforts to defend his rights to the design. Keeping track of all the people selling Leather Pride Flag merchandise, let alone determining who sold them at profit and who sold them at cost, proved impossible.

Bennington flagcontroversy

He also pioneered or popularized a host of BDSM techniques including fancy rope bondage and rope body harness, electrical devices, and more. He became a central figure in the National Leather Association, for a time the United States’ largest BDSM organization. He organized the demonstrations and seminars for its convention, Living in Leather, the first — and for many years — the premier annual BDSM conference.

Members of the Chicago Hellfire Club, an organization in which DeBlase was a central member, refused to fly the flag in 1989 because it was “too controversial,” but relented in 1990 and displayed the flag at their events.

When the National Leather Association hosted its annual Living in Leather in Toronto in 1993, convention organizers produced a Canadian version of the flag with a red maple leaf replacing the heart. A few other Canadian versions of the flag have also appeared, including one that retains the red heart but adds red maple leaves along the central white stripe.

Bennington flag meaningtoday in America

It’s also unclear how serious DeBlase was over enforcing his rights to the design. For a time, he licensed its use for as little as one dollar per year. Over the next decade, DeBlase commented favorably on the host of new adaptations of his design people produced, including jewelry, whips, and logos for clubs and events.

DeBlase urged people to broaden their outlook. Presenting a broadly defined BDSM/Leather community would help that community grow and win acceptance from both LGBT organizations and mainstream society. This, of course, is why DeBlase sent his prototype flags to three different BDSM organizations: one for gay men (GMSMA), one for women (The Outcasts), and one mixed, but at that time primarily heterosexual (Janus).

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The leather pride flag is composed of a central horizontal white stripe with four alternating black and royal blue stripes above and below it. A red heart occupies its upper left quadrant. DeBlase left interpretation of its symbolism to the viewer but was otherwise quite open his motivations in creating the flag. Yet, misperceptions about the Leather Pride Flag and DeBlase’s intentions for it persist.

VintageBennington Flag

DeBlase wanted people to fly the flag in pride marches scheduled in cities across the United States that June. He expected these to be the largest pride marches yet organized because they marked Stonewall’s 20th anniversary. DeBlase intended the Leather Pride Flag as a BDSM/Leather equivalent of popular rainbow flag. He distributed prototype flags to three organizations: GMSMA (Gay Men’s S/M Association), a New York men’s BDSM organization, the Outcasts, a San Francisco women’s BDSM organization, and the Society of Janus, the second oldest open membership BDSM organization in the United States, which is also headquartered in San Francisco. Despite using the term “leather” for the flag, DeBlase sent the first flags to three of the largest and most influential American BDSM organizations. His intent that both BDSM and leather organizations fly the flag was clear.

In his writing and teaching, DeBlase consistently promoted a broad definition of “leather” that included BDSM and a host of other kinky activities and sexual proclivities. As he wrote a Drummer reader in 1987, “for want of a better term, we use ‘leather’ to include a great variety of masculine images including black leather, cowboy, police, military, fireman, construction worker, athletic, trucker, logger, gangster, gladiator, mountain man, redneck, etc.” DeBlase advocated “broadening” rather than narrowing definitions. Leather and kinky folk were “not a uniform homogenous sea of black leather.” The terms “leather and S&M” mean “different things to different people” who pursue different lifestyles. They vary over “preferred style of dress, sexual fetish, preferred activities, tolerances, etc.”

It was, in fact, common in those years for people to use the terms leather and S/M (or SM) almost interchangeably. Hence the name National Leather Association for a BDSM organization.

I’m a professor specializing in military, technological, and sexual history. My latest book is Sadomasochism and the BDSM Community in the United States.

What is theBennington flag

Following DeBlase’s presentation of the flag at the 1989 International Mr. Leather contest, Susie Shepherd (International Ms. Leather 1989 and the first woman to appear on the cover of Leather Journal) wrote him and asked permission to make one to carry in Portland’s upcoming pride parade. At the time, the Portland LGBTQ community held its Gay/Lesbian Pride parade the week before New York, San Francisco, and other major cities.

Barry Douglas, then chair of GMSMA, the largest men’s BDSM organization in the United States, wrote DeBlase complaining the flag “lacked immediately recognizable meaning” and contradictorily that “the colors black and blue are overly obvious and leave us open to criticism and possible sarcasm.” Rather than a flag created and presented to the community by one man, Douglas and other GMSMA members wanted to produce a flag through a design contest with broad participation from BDSM and Leather organizations.

The National Leather Association, which at DeBlase’s urging became the first organization to fly the flag in public, was (and remains) a pansexual BDSM organization. For DeBlase, the point of the flag was both to unite disparate elements of a broad BDSM/Leather community and to symbolize that unity.

The Leather Pride Flag is a ubiquitous symbol at BDSM conferences and gatherings of leather clubs. Members of both BDSM and leather organizations regularly carry it in pride parades and similar demonstrations. While many recall that Tony DeBlase designed the flag, much of his reasoning behind it — and his central importance to the BDSM community — is often forgotten.

DeBlase first presented the flag at the 28th International Mr. Leather contest in Chicago on 28 May 1989 and then discussed it and his intentions for it in an editorial in Drummer magazine that appeared shortly afterward.

DeBlase’s Leather Pride Flag drew on the American flag for inspiration. Laurie Lane, who ran Leatherworld in Melbourne, Australia, made an Australian version, which he showed to DeBlaes in 1991.