One, Inc. v. Olesen

''One, Inc. v. Olesen'', 355 U.S. 371 (1958), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court for LGBT rights in the United States. It was the first U.S. Supreme Court ruling to deal with homosexuality and the first to address free speech rights with respect to homosexuality. The Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling that the gay magazine ''ONE'' violated obscenity laws, thus upholding constitutional protection for pro-homosexual writing.

ONE, Inc., a spinoff of the Mattachine Society, published the early pro-gay ''ONE: The Homosexual Magazine'' beginning in 1953. After a campaign of harassment from the U.S. Post Office Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles Postmaster Otto Olesen declared the October 1954 issue "obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy" and therefore unmailable under the Comstock laws. In that issue, the Post Office objected to "Sappho Remembered", a story of a lesbian's affection for a twenty-year-old "girl" who gives up her boyfriend to live with her, the lesbian, because it was "lustfully stimulating to the average homosexual reader"; "Lord Samuel and Lord Montagu", a poem about homosexual cruising that it said contained "filthy words"; and (3) an advertisement for ''The Circle'', a magazine containing homosexual pulp romance stories, that would direct the reader to other obscene material.

The magazine, represented by a young attorney who had authored the cover story in the October 1954 issue, Eric Julber, Julber's article was "You Can't Print It!", about how to steer clear of government censorship policies. He represented One, Inc. ''pro bono''. In 2015 he was 90 years old and living in Carmel, California, with his wife. brought suit in U.S. District Court seeking an injunction against the Postmaster. In March 1956, U.S. District Judge Thurmond Clarke ruled for the defendant. He wrote: "The suggestion advanced that homosexuals should be recognized as a segment of our people and be accorded special privilege as a class is rejected." A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision unanimously in February 1957. Julber filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on June 13, 1957. On January 13, 1958, that court both accepted the case and, without hearing oral argument, issued a terse ''per curiam'' decision reversing the Ninth Circuit. The decision, citing its June 24, 1957, landmark decision in '' Roth v. United States'' , read in its entirety:

On the same day, the court issued a similar ''per curiam'' decision also citing ''Roth'' in '' Sunshine Book Co. v. Summerfield'', which concerned the distribution of two nudist magazines.

''One, Inc. v. Olesen'' was the first U.S. Supreme Court ruling to deal with homosexuality and the first to address free speech rights with respect to homosexuality. The justices supporting the reversal were Frankfurter, Douglas, Clark, Harlan, and Whittaker. As an affirmation of ''Roth'', the case itself has proved most important for, in the words of one scholar, "its on-the-ground effects. By protecting ''ONE'', the Supreme Court facilitated the flourishing of a gay and lesbian culture and a sense of community" at the same time as the federal government was purging homosexuals from its ranks.

In its next issue, ''ONE'' told its readers: "For the first time in American publishing history, a decision binding on every court now stands. ... affirming in effect that it is in no way proper to describe a love affair between two homosexuals as constitut(ing) obscenity."

See also

* List of LGBT-related cases in the United States Supreme Court

References

Further reading

* , describing
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External links

*

''One, Inc. v. Olesen'', Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, February 27, 1957



Homosexuality and Free Speech: The 1958 ONE Case

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United States LGBT rights case law
United States obscenity case law
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Warren Court
1958 in United States case law
1950s in LGBT history