Cracking Open the Closet Door:

One, Inc. v. Olesen, 1958

When One: The Homosexual Magazine began to send its fledgling, pro-gay publication through the mail in 1953, it ran into trouble. The U.S. Post Office called the publication obscene and banned it from being mailed.

One sued. While lower courts turned down its case, the U.S. Supreme Court took it on in 1958, lifting the ban one One's distribution. It was a victory for the First Amendment right to free speech—and for One, which could now spread the message of a tiny but growing gay rights movement.

It would be 28 years before the Supreme Court would again hear a case on gay rights.

“Sex and obscenity are not synonymous.”

—Justice William J. Brennan in Roth v. United States, which was cited as precedent in the court's decision in One, Inc. v. Olesen

One: The Homosexual Magazine, v. 2, no. 8, October 1954. John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives

One: The Homosexual Magazine, v. 2, no. 8, October 1954. John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives

One magazine, 1954—the issue that the Los Angeles Post Office seized in 1954. It used it to charge One’s editors with sending “obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious” material through the mail, a violation of the 1873 Comstock Act.

“Look, don’t joke. The year 2000, yes. But not today.”

—One editor Dale Jennings, reacting to the Supreme Court decision in favor of the magazine