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.