Tony DeBlase (1942–2000), also called Anthony DeBlase, is hard to skip in American leather and BDSM. Two records sit in one life. He was a mammalogist who specialized in bat biology, and he was a leather publisher and the designer of the pride flag. The science training was formal. The vocation was leather print and that flag. He died of liver failure in 2000. His partner Andrew Charles was with him. In 1974 he and Robert Eugene Martin co-wrote A Manual of Mammalogy: With Keys to Families of the World.
DungeonMaster, Fledermaus, Drummer
In 1979 he founded DungeonMaster, a magazine about sadomasochistic technique. It ran until 1994, and he wrote for it. The gap it filled was instruction. In 1982, under the pen name Fledermaus, he published The Fledermaus Anthology, a book of fictional SM stories. The path is plain: a technique magazine, erotic fiction, then the flagship leather magazine of that era. In 1986 he bought Drummer. In 1991 he sold it to Martijn Bakker, owner of RoB Amsterdam. He was on both the how-to side and the culture side of gay leather media.
The leather pride flag
On 28 May 1989, at International Mister Leather, DeBlase first showed the leather pride flag he had designed. The stripes and the heart became the most recognized visual mark of leather and of many BDSM communities worldwide. The first reaction was a fight. In the article “A Leather Pride Flag” he wrote that many people wanted a community flag, and that some on the U.S. East Coast were offended because he had not brought a wider community into the design. That split is part of leather history. The symbol mattered. The argument about process did not stop at the dungeon door. On 18 September 1990, Clive Platman (Mr. Australia Drummer) gave him an Australian variant, with the Southern Cross set into the original leather design. In 1999, at International Mr. Leather, DeBlase gave the Leather Archives & Museum one of three original prototype flags he had assembled.
Leather Archives & Museum
He also worked on the record. In 1991 he and Chuck Renslow founded the Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M), a community archive, library, and museum for the history and culture of leather, kink, fetish, and BDSM. From 1992 to 2000 he was vice president of the board. He started a Leather History Timeline and installed it on the south wall of the main gallery. His papers are in the LA&M holdings. In 2021 the museum created the Chuck Renslow & Tony DeBlase Founders’ Award, and still names him as co-founder in an honor the institution is using.
Awards, before and after his death
The list runs past 2000. In 1987, NLA Man of the Year. In 1990, Pantheon of Leather Business Person of the Year. In 1994, Pantheon of Leather Lifetime Achievement. In 1997, the Forebear Award. In 2001, Community Choice (Man). In 2010, the Leather Hall of Fame. That Pantheon and that Hall of Fame are different honors. He was made a Chevalier at the Leather Coronation in San Francisco, and the Chicago Hellfire Club, of which he was a member, gave him the Caligula Award. In 2017 he was among the people cast into bronze bootprints on San Francisco’s South of Market Leather History Alley.
