One Magazine Archives

  ONE magazine was the first pro-gay magazine in the U.S. This blog is dedicated to posting articles and pictures from this publication. 

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Hello and welcome to this blog! This blog is dedicated to posting content found in the pro-gay magazine, ONE. This blog may be interesting to you if you are queer, a history nerd, or a mix of both! Here's a little q&a about my blog.

What is ONE magazine?

Published by One Inc., ONE magazine was the first pro-gay publication in the United States. It was first published in 1953 and its final publication was in 1967. It is also responsible for the court case One, Inc. v. Olesen. JSTOR has this amazing article I highly recommend about the publication's history, format, and impact!

Where can I access full publications?

There are a few places online that allow full access. I personally use JSTOR ! It is open access.

Why is this blog for ONE specifically?

There are many important and fascinating lgbtq magazines/publications throughout history! I did not choose One because I think it is the best or only important queer publication in history. I choose One specifically because it is the first pro-gay publication in the US and is personally the first one I discovered while researching queer history myself. Additionally, I did not see any active tumblr blogs about it and thought why not?

What's the importance of learning about this magazine?

(This is a bit long, sorry!) The reasons for archiving queer history publications and learning queer history are the same as learning and preserving any history.

"Studying history helps us understand and grapple with complex questions and dilemmas by examining how the past has shaped (and continues to shape) global, national, and local relationships between societies and people." (University of Wisconsin-Madison).

One thing I find super thrilling about this publication is its interaction with it's audience. Readers write in with their opinions, stories, and anonymous letters. This magazine really tried to be for their readers which is admirable. This also means we can read some of the different discourse and ideas within the queer community at this time. This is a screenshot of history we are very lucky to have. It is important as queer people to see that we have existed for a long time and that we are strong, resilient people who have been finding ways to exist as we are. one magazine is just one (insert joke here) fragment of proof of that sentiment.

Another important idea we can take away from One magazine, and the homophile movement in general, is that respectability politics and trying to appease the oppressor does not work in the long run. In trying to appease a heteronormative world with desperate attempts of " we are just like you" we have a community that turns on each other and does not reach its full potential. This issue existed then and it exists now. Of course, people who held these ideas, especially in the homophile movement, just wanted a better future for lgbtq people, however, history allows us to see it does not get us far enough. To quote Jean-Paul Marat, leader of Vanguard, "If we want the majority of society to accept us as we are, we are going to have to start accepting ourselves and others like us."

Do you agree with everything you post from the magazine?

"There are contradictions in its pages, which means they echo life."

Mairead Case

No. One magazine gives an insight into the queer community (in America) during the 50s/60s. By looking through my blog or looking through the magazine yourself, you may find views that are problematic, outdated, or an opinion/philosophy you do not agree with. As I share fragments of this publication, it is not me agreeing with the authors but instead sharing the different perspectives of the time. It is important to acknowledge, as Case notes, that the authors are largely white and middle class, and while there are attempts of intersectionality, some of the takes are particularly tone deaf. So do not take everything posted as law, it is simply just something to observe and possibly apply to today's world.

Feel free to ask questions, share more queer history, and share other queer publications!

No TERFS or SWERFS. This is an inclusive, queer-positive, blog.

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wooo logged back in. not sure what to do with this blog. i may stay with ONE although im quite busy, but i'd also be open to doing other publications. im thinking perhaps just a queer poetry blogs from old magazines such as one as it seems that is what i posted mostly anyways. until then if ur looking at this blog hello mwah

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“Poems for L.” by Ann Wooster

Volume 7 Issue 11 / November 1959

“1. The great stars wheel in the sky

Imperceptibly dying;

And I who love you, Atthis,

Why do I demand a better augur?

2. I was glad when you said,

Your body the length of mine,

"Who are you?"

3. Do not be afraid when you cannot

Keep me in your mind.

I want to be a sweet habit

That you never remember,

That you never forget.

4. I see the young men look at you,

I see the young girls bring you gifts

I am frightened by your beauty, Atthis,

By the longing that turns you to me.

-Ann Wooster

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WomaNews (Volume 11, Issue 2), 1990

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ONE magazine, mid 60s.

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hello! apologies for disappearing! I will try to post again, I’m aiming for at least one post a week! much love

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"Night" by Norma Ramsey

Volume 3, Issue 4 / April 1955

[ID: The background image is a yellow abstract image of a person with long hair sleeping in a bed, the text is written out over the art in a handwritten font. Reads as follows

Out of the night into my heart

bring your love

to comfort me as I lie sleeping,

to smooth away my furrowed brow,

dry my tear-stained eye.

Out of this night with all your prayer

bring me forth

renewed, endowed with light

that I might find

My rightful place.]

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"Sonnet" by William V. Stone

Volume 9, Issue 3 / March 1961

[ID: Love, let me sing the splendor of your thighs

And that soft line irradiating from

Your back, nor to false modesty succumb:

These are chaste and lovely as your eyes.

The shoulder's softness and the breast's surmise,

The silken waist nor the sweet buttocks shun,

Nor last - though Love, there be a shamefast some

Who would defame it with a false surmise -

Last, last and loveliest, that store the wealth

Lies hidden in the sanctuary place

Where love alone may enter and not die,

Although if the intruder there by stealth

Be smitten, having ravaged for a space,

I should not grudge it, were the intruder I ]

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"COMING OUT."

"Coming out" by A.E. Smith

Volume 10, Issue 6 / June 1962

[ID: Out from where? Out into what? One of the unique things about homosexual minority is that its members are not “raised” in their minority. A homosexual enters it, and he or she enters it “cold.” This entrance is what we call, in our homosexual parlance, “COMING OUT” By A.E. Smith

You, as a homosexual, know that your “coming out” changed your whole life. It was like coming out of a cocoon. The world thereafter to you was a whole new world. The transition perhaps was a rough experience perhaps a delightful discovery, probably some gradation in between. Anyway, you know it was a momentous transition. What happened? You know what events transpired in your own case. You probably just call that series of events your “coming out.” But what happened in the larger intellectual and impersonal sense? Why did the homosexual world choose the phrase, “Coming out”? Why not, just for instance, “initiation,” or “debut”? And is it “coming out” in the sense of coming from somewhere, from something, or is it “coming out” in the sense of coming into somewhere or something? Or both? Regardless of its origin, sociologically our slang phrase is very illuminating. For, as sociologist Mrs. Suszanne Prosin puts it, homosexuals are a minority, but in a way, they are a minority in reverse since they come from a majority and go into a minority; they are “raised” on the values of the dominant group and then must unlearn some of those values when they leave. When you “come out,” that “new world” you entered was, in your case –because what you prefer sexually is against the law, against religion’s teaching, and absolutely forbidden by the majority— because of that, your “new world” is only another word for “minority.” “Coming out” is our slang phrase for coming from a majority and going into a minority. What values changed when you “came out”? Your attitude toward sex, certainly. Before you “came out” you accepted the majority’s teaching about the evilness of homosexuality, that it was absolutely beyond the pale. You learned from the church that it was so horrifying that it was unmentionable, the “abomination,” so far more evil than just the ordinary heterosexual sex like adultery that it couldn’t even be listed with the Ten Commandments. You learned it was against the law and accepted the majority’s judgment when they sent people to prison for it. Your values in this regard are now a far, far cry from the majority’s. It has to be—or you wouldn't be holding this particular magazine in your hands right now. The chances are, also, that when you “came out” you left behind you at least a goodly portion of the majority belief in the divinity of the Christian or Jewish religion you were raised in. You might still occasionally go to church. But as a thinking (and practicing) homosexual you probably “go,” maybe with your mother or heterosexual friends, as part of “passing.” Which brings us to another thing that changed when you “came out,” one of the very first things, the vast importance of which you learned quickly from the first other gay people you met, in case you didn't know it already from having been raised in the teaching of the majority– you learned to “pass.” You learned the absolute necessity for secrecy from the majority (which, immediately, included your family and the police, but also all the other heterosexuals) regarding the truth of your sexuality. This unfortunate necessity for secrecy (or, As Dr. Merritt, Professor Emeritus of ONE INSTITUTE, put it in a lecture on Homophile Ethics and Philosophy, “the necessity of wearing the mask), colors the life of every homosexual. It stems from there being immeasurably more prejudice against

Homosexuals than against any other minority, and the immediate necessity is, of course, your job. I would estimate that 95% of homosexuals “pass,” and I do not think I am under any illusion in believing that 94% would be promptly fired were they declare themselves. I can think of no better way of pointing up this blight upon millions of lives and upon society itself than looking into a period of history when it did not exist, which is exactly what Mary Renault does in her novel, The Last of the Wine. (We are fortunate that Miss Renault is also a noted Greek scholar and that nobody questions her historical veracity!) What a different “coming out”! Her young hero has no need for secrecy, He was expected to take a homosexual lover and is even counseled about it by his father. The public disgrace there was not being able to attract a lover. “Coming out” then entailed no secrecy, no hypocrisy, no wearing of the mask. Homosexuality was an integral and very necessary part of the Greek religion and educational system. But today we are not living in the antique days of Greece. Greece was mostly untillable and could not support a large population. Homosexuality was encouraged for this purpose (along with exposure of excess infants), just as it was in the Cretan and Japanese ancient civilizations. And while it is true our world is about to have an overpopulation problem, that problem did not exist to the Jewish population and it's off-shoot, Christianity, when they came to power. The homosexual today “comes out” to an entirely different situation, However, I think the illustration of the diametrically opposite “coming out” of the young Greek is very instructive for us. It shows that the homosexual was not always in the fix he is in today. And if it happened once in history, it is possible it can happen again. History repeats itself, they say. Even without evidence of this historical example, we have reason to suspect that “coming out” need not always be the shock that it was for you and me. For in our own lifetime the hostile world has been made less hostile. We have seen one state of the United States actually alter its law to make legal homosexual love between two consenting adults in privacy. Frankly, I would have laughed at anyone telling me, when I ”came out,” that such a thing could happen in my lifetime. I’m an optimistic fellow but such was the ingrained pessimism of the outlook of my generation that “came out” that I could not envisage such a thing. I can envisage much more. I can envisage a time when future homosexuals on “coming out” need not ask, ‘Out from where?” and for an answer have to look behind them and see only the red-hot blind prejudice, and need not ask, “Out into what?” and look ahead and put on the mask. It may only be a vision but I have seen it.

Ad at the bottom of the page reads as follows - Arcadie Monthly magazine in French; literary and scientific, infrequent photos and drawings. $9. Yearly. 74 Boulevard de Reuilly, Paris, XII, France