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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

May 7, 2010

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TH

www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

BRIAN DEWITT (2)

OB of Hickory, N.C. fits Boy Greg of Lakewood with a stainless steel collar in the Whips.com booth at CLAW's vendor mart.

CLAW

Continued from page 2

While CLAW always honors the past, its own and that of the leather community at large, with the tenth anniversary being held next year, McMahon and the other organizers have their eyes firmly fixed on the future. Moving to a bigger hotel

While the planning process has barely begun, and the organizers seldom have concrete information about the following year to share this early in the game, McMahon did drop a bombshell-after five years at the Wyndham, CLAW will be moving.

"We've outgrown the hotel," he said. "They've been wonderful to us, but we're moving to the Hilton Garden Inn on Carnegie Avenue, cater-corner from Progressive Field."

The attraction of the new venue? More space a lot of it.

"It has around 50 more rooms and nearly double the meeting space, so our vendor area and our workshops are will be double," he explained. "This year we doubled attendance at our workshops. We brought in national experts in different fields. It was really well received."

"We'll have workshops on Friday and Saturday, as opposed to just Saturday, because we have the space now," he continued. "We'll accommodate 400 for dinner.

This year we had 286, which was our biggest ever."

Bareback videos not banned

One issue that came up in the planning of this year's event was the question of whether or not to bar video companies that make bareback videos, films in which safe sex is not practiced. International Mr. Leather found itself at the center of controversy in the last year with their decision to ban companies like Treasure Island Media and USA Jock from their events.

"IML has a policy of no barebacking, and in doing so they've eliminated any vendor who sells bareback, and Treasure Island is a barebacking company, as is USAJock," McMahon noted. "The CLAW board decided not to censor. We're not endorsing, but people are adults, they know what's going on, and watching a video isn't going to make you go out and do it."

"We're all about safe sex, but we're not into censoring, and adults can make their own decisions. We're a sex-positive convention," he concluded.

IML was the target of a great deal of criticism for its decision, as was the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. A number of bloggers and activists argue that IML and Folsom should bring these other viewpoints into the discussion instead of banning them.

Regardless of what video companies show up, however, CLAW X will be held from April 28 to May 1, 2011 at the Hilton Garden Inn. More information is available at www.clawinfo.org.

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CLAW President Dennis McMahon and Chairman Robert Miller, left and right, give the Impromptu Award to Scott Douglas of Square Peg Toys, who has been a sponsor from the beginning.

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