This year marks a very important milestone in GLBT history. Fifty years ago, on January 13, 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its first ever pro-gay ruling in ONE, Inc. v. Olesen, a landmark decision that allowed a magazine for gays and lesbians to be sent through the U.S. mail.
ONE, Inc. was founded by several members of the Los Angeles Mattachine Society who felt that a strong nationwide voice for education and advocacy was desperately needed. According to ONE, Inc.’s articles of incorporation, “the specific and primary purposes … are to publish and disseminate a magazine dealing primarily with homosexuality from the scientific, historical and critical point of view, and to aid in the social integration and rehabilitation of the sexual variant.” But this wasn’t going to be just any magazine. Under the inaugural editorial leadership of Martin Block, Dale Jennings, Don Slater, and Donald Webster Cory, ONE magazine was to be a first-class product, a dramatic departure from the typewritten and mimeographed sheets that were more common at the time.
So when ONE debuted in January 1953, it sported a very sophisticated look, with bold graphics and professional design. ONE’s slick offering quickly caught the attention of gays and lesbians across the country, and circulation jumped to nearly 2,000 within a few months—with most paying extra to have their magazine delivered in an unmarked wrapper. Still, ONE’s survival depended on the day jobs of its few contributors, who typically worked under multiple pennames to make the staff appear larger to readers—and sometimes to protect their own identities.
By today’s standards, an early edition of ONE might look rather tame. There were no racy pictures, and even its fiction was mostly limited to depictions of longing and desire. There was rarely any evidence of physical contact in its pages. But what the magazine lacked in raciness, it made up for in audacity. ONE’s editorial tone was bold and unapologetic, covering politics, civil rights, legal issues, police harassment, employment and familial problems, and other social, philosophical, historical and psychological topics. ONE quickly became a voice for thousands of silent gays and lesbians across the U.S., many of whom wrote letters of deep gratitude to ONE’s editors (all published anonymously).
ONE played a critical role for gays and lesbians during a very dark time. Its debut coincided with a major push to rid the U.S. civil service of homosexuals. President Eisenhower would sign Executive Order 10450 in April of that year, which barred gays from federal employment with its “sexual perversion” clause. Homosexuals were stigmatized as subversives on a par with Communists by some leading politicians seeking to advance their careers. The FBI had launched a major crackdown on homosexuality across the U.S., with many gays and lesbians losing their jobs for merely receiving homophile publications in the mail; and vice squads everywhere were setting up entrapment stings in bars and other meeting places, where a simple proposition or touch could lead to arrest and public exposure.
So when ONE caught the eye of the FBI, they immediately launched an investigation aimed at shutting it down. They went so far as to write to the employers of ONE’s editors and writers (they all depended on their day jobs for income), saying that their employees were “deviants” and “security risks.” Fortunately, no one lost their job; the FBI decided it wasn’t worth their time; and ONE continued publishing.
The job of shutting down ONE then fell to the U.S. Post Office. Since its inception, L.A. postal authorities had vetted each issue before deciding whether it was legal to ship under the Post Office’s stringent anti-obscenity standards. Since homosexuality was illegal in most states, ONE had the added problem of possibly being guilty of promoting criminal activity. The Post Office acted in August 1953, holding up that month’s issue for three weeks while deciding if it violated federal laws. Finally, officials in Washington decided the magazine didn’t violate federal laws and ordered the L.A. Post Office to release it for shipment.
ONE, true to form, reacted defiantly to that move in its October issue by proclaiming in an editorial printed on the cover, “ONE is not grateful”:
Your August issue is late because the postal authorities in Washington and Los Angeles had it under a microscope. They studied it carefully from the 2nd until the 18th of September and finally decided that there was nothing obscene, lewd or lascivious in it. They allowed it to continue on its way. We have been found suitable for mailing. … But ONE thanks no one for this reluctant acceptance. It is true that this decision is historic. Never before has a governmental agency of this size admitted that homosexuals not only have legal rights but might have respectable motives as well. The admission is welcome, but it’s tardy and far from enough. As we sit around quietly like nice little ladies and gentlemen gradually educating the public and the courts at our leisure, thousands of homosexuals are being unjustly arrested, blackmailed, fined, jailed, intimidated, beaten, ruined and murdered. …
ONE’s editors knew they weren’t in the clear, but they didn’t know where their next threat would come from. That threat, it appears, may have come from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Alexander Wiley (R-WI), who wrote a letter of protest to U.S. Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield. Having run across the March 1954 issue (the cover story was “The Importance of Being Different”), Sen. Wiley registered a “vigorous protest against the use of the United States mails to transmit a so-called ‘magazine’ devoted to the advancement of sexual perversions.”
The particulars of this action weren’t known by ONE’s editors. But as defiant as ONE was in the October 1953 issue, they knew that the threat of being shut down by the government still loomed large—if finances and distribution problems didn’t get to them first. Financial pressures forced them to skip the August and September 1954 issues and to extend everyone’s subscription by two months. To avoid future legal problems, ONE’s editors asked Eric Julber, their young straight lawyer fresh out of law school, to write a set of rules for the staff to follow. When readers began to complain that ONE was too tame, the editors asked Julber to print his rules in the returning October 1954 issue with a cover declaring, “You Can’t Print It!” Those rules prohibited:
(1) Lonely hearts ads, seeking pen pals or meetings.
(2) “Cheesecake” art or photos.
(3) Descriptions of sexual acts, or the preliminaries thereof.
(4) Descriptions of experiences which become too explicit. (Permissible: “John was my friend for a year.” Not: “That night we made mad love.”)
(5) Descriptions of homosexuality as a practice which the author encourages in others, or waxes too enthusiastic about.
(6) Fiction with too much physical contact between the characters, i.e., characters cannot rub knees, feel thighs, hold hands, soap backs, or undress before one another.
Julber insisted that he review each issue before it went to the publisher. But all this failed to keep ONE out of trouble—possibly because he didn’t strictly enforce his own rules: the October 1954 issue was arguably the raciest to date. The very issue that ran Julber’s rules featured a fictional short story called “Sappho Remembered” in which two young lovers touched four times, declared their love for each other, and had a happy ending. And there were two ads, one for a Swedish magazine (clearly “obscene”!) and another for men’s pajamas and intimate wear.
That was enough for the L.A. Post Office to seize that issue—the one with “You Can’t Print It!” on the cover—and charge the editors with violating the 1873 Comstock Act, which prohibited sending “obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious” material through the mail. The editors were eager to sue the Post Office, but ONE’s financial condition forced them to hold off for nearly a year. Julber took the case for free and looked for help from the ACLU, but they wouldn’t touch it. Finally, it was up to young Julber alone to argue ONE’s case in federal district court that the magazine was educational and not pornographic. It didn’t go well. The judge ruled for the Post Office in March 1956, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in February 1957, calling ONE “morally depraving and debasing” and saying that the magazine “has a primary purpose of exciting lust, lewd and lascivious thoughts and sensual desires in the minds of persons reading it.”
ONE then took its case to the U.S. Supreme Court. To everyone’s surprise, the Court agreed to take the case, its first ever dealing with homosexuality. Even more surprising, the Supreme Court issued its short, one-sentence decision on January 13, 1958 without hearing oral arguments. That decision not only overturned the two lower courts, but the Court expanded the First Amendment’s free speech and press freedoms by effectively limiting the power of the Comstock Act to interfere with the written word. As a result, lesbian and gay publications could be mailed without legal repercussions, though many continued to experience harassment from the Post Office and U.S. Customs.
True to its educational mission, ONE, Inc. founded the One Institute as an educational arm in 1956. In 1958, the ONE Institute Quarterly became the first academic journal on gay and lesbian studies in America. ONE magazine’s last issue was in 1967 following a very long and acrimonious split in ONE, Inc.’s governing board. Today, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives houses the world’s largest research library on GLBT history and culture.
This piece was adapted from an on-line article (“Today in History: A Spunky ONE and the U.S. Post Office”) published on BoxTurtleBulletin.com, whose editor is the author of this piece.
