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Behind the Aegis

(53,831 posts)
Mon Jan 21, 2019, 06:05 PM Jan 2019

It's the 61st anniversary of the first gay rights wins at the U.S. Supreme Court

This month marks the 61st anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding one of the earliest gay publications in America, ONE: The Homosexual Magazine.

The U.S. postal service had attempted to ban the magazine as “obscene,” and the one-sentence 1958 Supreme Court ruling in the magazine’s favor marked the first time gay rights ever won in the highest U.S. court.

It all started back in January 1953 when ONE — a magazine published by an offshoot of the early gay men’s organization, The Mattachine Society — published its first issue. It sold for 25 cents in gay bars (about the price of a beer) and had articles like “Homosexual Rights,” “Are Homosexuals Neurotic?,” and “A Tribute to Dr. Kinsey,” according to gay historian Matt Baume.

The 1950s and ’60s were a time when being openly gay could get you arrested, beaten up by cops, thrown in jail, criminally charged as a sexual offender, fired from your job and publicly disgraced with your name published in the paper just for being in a gay bar or consorting with “known homosexuals.”

So any magazine about gay men was, in essence, encouraging criminal activity.

more....

I know quite a bit of gay history and this was news to me!

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