In a country where gay sex is illegal, is a magazine for gay people a publication for criminals? Is the content obscene, even if there’s no sexual content on the page, just because sex might be suggested somewhere off the page or in the pages of an entirely different publication? And most importantly, can you put this magazine in the mail?
Featured image: An illustration accompanying the article in the October 1954 issue of ONE Magazine, laying out their legal counsel’s interpretation of what they should be legally allowed to send through the mail.
The cover of the October 1954 issue of ONE Magazine. (Image source)
The cover of the August 1953 issue, which was seized but later released by postal authorities in Los Angeles. (Image source)
Sources
- Harry Hay
- Before Stonewall: The Homophile Movement
- Pierre Louÿs
- The Conflicted Gay Pioneer
- The Book Club That Helped Spark the Gay-Rights Movement
- ONE Magazine digital archives on JSTOR
- United States Postal Inspection Service
- What are the Comstock Laws?
- ONE Institute
- ONE Magazine cover August 1953
- ONE – R. H. Crowther, Jane Dahr, MILT SOSIN, JACK W. ROBERTS, Allan -10/1/1954
- Eric Julber to Dale Jennings correspondence, 1953
- Supreme Court faced gay rights decision in 1958 over ‘obscene’ magazine
- Eric Julber
- Roth v. United States
- One, Incorporated v. Olesen
- 18 U.S. Code § 1461 – Mailing obscene or crime-inciting matter