One Magazine

ONE appeared in January 1953 with the Carlyle quote on the first page. It featured articles on the Mattachine Society and several personal essays. From the beginning, the founders insisted on a professional look; even though they were paying the initial publication costs themselves, they opted to typeset and print ONE instead of mimeographing it. The magazine distinguished itself with bold graphics, eye-catching artwork and, eventually, paid advertising (one of the first ads was for men's pajamas). found a pool of eager subscribers in the membership of the Mattachine Society, and, within a few months, the magazine was selling 2,000 copies a month.

Besides drawing gay readers, however, ONE also caught the attention of law enforcement officials. In July 1953, the FBI initiated a full-scale investigation and even wrote letters to the employers of ONE's editors, advising them that their employees were "deviants" and "security risks." Despite these underhanded tactics, none of the ONE staffers lost their day jobs, and the FBI never succeeded in shutting the magazine down.

Postal authorities, however, were nearly able to close the magazine several times. The first time was in August 1953, when the Los Angeles postmaster seized all copies of ONE on the grounds that its content was obscene. But U.S. Post Office officials in Washington decided that ONE did not violate federal law. The following year, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, Alexander Wiley, renewed the attack on ONE, writing to the Postmaster General to protest "the use of the United States mails to transmit a so-called 'magazine' devoted to the advancement of sexual perversion." Wiley's letter led to a second effort by the Post Office to keep ONE out of the hands of its subscribers.

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In October 1954, postal officials once again seized the magazine and charged the editors with sending obscene material through the mail, a violation of the 1873 Comstock Act. The editors hired a heterosexual defense attorney, who argued in federal district court that ONE was educational and strove simply "to create understanding of an extremely knotty social problem." But the judge ruled for the Post Office, and on appeal, a second judge concurred, dismissing ONE as "cheap pornography."
Determined, ONE took its case all the way to the Supreme Court. On January 13, 1958, the Court delivered an astonishing unanimous pro-gay decision, overturning the rulings of the two lower courts and limiting the power of the Comstock Act. 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.