The IMEN Gathering, held each July in rural eastern Maryland, began in 1995. Three other gatherings attract a few hundred attendees each. First held in 1999, CMEN now draws about 500 attendees. The second largest gathering, the CMEN Gathering, is sponsored by California Men Enjoying Naturism and is held each September in Malibu, California. The annual GNI Gathering, held each August in rural eastern Pennsylvania, remains the largest gay naturist gathering, attracting about 800 gay naturists.
GNI held its first gathering under its new name in 1992. The 1990s saw the beginning of annual gay naturist gatherings on a large scale. The website Spike's Naked Planet lists over 100 gay naturist clubs in the United States, about half a dozen in Canada and a scattering in other places across the world. GNI and IMEN provided organizational assistance to new clubs, and the advent of the Internet meant greater publicity opportunities for new and existing clubs. The number of local gay naturist clubs continued to grow in the 1990s, particularly the latter part of the decade. He was later terminated in a similar fashion from IMEN over the same issues. Its goals were similar to those of GNI, including being a registry of local clubs, providing referrals to local groups, helping new local gay naturist groups organize, and holding an annual gathering. Out of this split, the employee in question founded International Men Enjoying Naturism (IMEN). In 1994, there was a schism in GNI due to a legal dispute over records and money with respect to the paid employee. GNI also became an umbrella organization for networking local gay naturist clubs. The new GNI became gender specific in its mission. Although GLN had been founded with the intent of attracting both gay men and lesbians, it had been a de facto all-male organization as there had never been any significant lesbian participation in the group. In 1992, the group reorganized, with two key changes: it became an independent entity (no longer a SIG of TNS) and it was renamed Gay Naturists International (GNI). About 60 members, all of them men, attended.Īnnual GLN gatherings grew steadily in the late 1980s and early 1990s. GLN had its first gathering at the Summit Lodge in Rockbridge, Ohio in 1985.
Kaufman agreed to oversee a gay SIG for TNS, and Gay and Lesbian Naturists (GLN) was formed in 1983. 2003), an openly gay New Yorker who had been hosting private nude socials for gay men in his home. According to Baxandall, from its inception TNS received almost daily inquires about a SIG for gay naturists. In contrast to the more conservative American Sunbathing Association (ASA) (which in 1995 was renamed the American Association for Nude Recreation, or AANR), TNS openly welcomed diverse groups of people and was a loose association of special interest groups (SIGs). In 1980, Lee Baxandall founded The Naturist Society (TNS). The first nationwide organization to promote gay naturism also originated in the early 1980s. Among the oldest and largest of the clubs that are still extant are Males au Naturel (MAN) in New York, Los Angeles Nude Guys (LANG), San Francisco Kindred Nudists (SKiNS), and the Greater Atlanta Naturist Group (GANG). Frontiers, Seattle Gay News and the Houston Voice-were important means of spreading the word about the first wave of gay naturist social clubs.
By that time, many major cities were served by LGBT newspapers that were established during the gay liberation movement of the 1970s. In the early 1980s, a number of unaffiliated local clubs for gay naturists began independently springing up in major metropolitan areas of the United States and Canada.