| This dissertation examines the contributions of ONE, Incorporated and ONE Magazine to the homophile movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Repressed by the federal, state, and local governments and branded as mentally ill sexual deviants by most doctors, homosexuals during the Cold War period faced particular challenges. The homophile movement constituted a response against these interlocking oppressions. Based in Los Angeles, California, ONE first appeared in 1953 and provided a vehicle in which homosexuals could protest their outsider status. They railed against biased police tactics, against censorship, and against stigmatization by the federal government. They challenged prescriptive shapers of culture to redefine homosexuality as a moral neutral. They argued among themselves over the tactics to achieve these goals; in that process, What legacies, if any, did they bequeath to gay liberation, the movement that succeeded them?; This study of ONE Magazine answers these questions. Articles, stories, and letters published in the magazine reveal that no single vision unified homosexuals, as some sought to assimilate into the mainstream and others sought to accentuate the point of difference, sexuality. As two other homophile organizations, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, increasingly touted assimilation, the few associated with ONE, Incorporated gradually cultivated a more direct approach. The seeds of the gay pride era, which coalesced around 1970, may be found in the pages of ONE Magazine , whose existence helped to cultivate the next stage of homosexual political activism. This project seeks to add their story to the burgeoning historiography of gay and lesbian history in the United States. |
