Guest Blogger Stephanie Donald

Stephanie Donald writes:

Let me cast your minds back a year and a half when John O’Brien and I were mixing it up on your “Heavy Hitter’s List,” Billy. I never liked the man and never will.

O’Brien maneuvered himself into a position of being elected Director of One, Inc. by the Board of Directors through phony credentials backed up by an award winning scholar from the University of California by the name of Dr. Walter Williams. The Board could hardly be faulted, could they…or could they?

Williams had his eye on getting hold of ONE for a song and a dance and O’Brien was “sent in” for that express reason. Once the reign of O’Brien began, materials began disappearing and money evaporated from the accounts and while the expenses were highly questionable and O’Brien didn’t keep receipts (that alone should have earned him a one-way ticket to the Grey Bar Hotel) and by the time the Board realized they were broke and fired O’Brien, he had set a perfect stage for Dr. Williams to come in and purchase ONE, Inc.

Williams already owned something called the International LGBT Archives so he called the purchase of ONE a “merger” when in fact it was an acquisition. Williams has made sure than any and all subjective archive material research in his possession cost researchers through the nose even though he had no way of claiming copyright on the old ONE magazine or the Homophile Quarterly and John O’Brien, in the last few months of reign as Director of the old ONE, destroyed all duplicate collections of ONE and the Homophile Quarterly by dumping boxes and boxes into the dumpster behind ONE’s offices.

Now we find out years later that Williams and someone named Richard Arlington were using grant money to arrange sexual adventures with underage boys around the Asian and Eurasian areas of the world…and this is justified through the grants how…?

I didn’t know about this until I read this email but it was funny that I had a conversation with Todd White a little while ago involving Williams just a little while ago. I guess I’m the dumb one in all this because I’m sure he knew and assumed I already knew.

Considering the good intentions with which all the gay pioneers such as Dorr Legg, Jim Kepner, Don Slater and Billy Glover along with all those people who worked to start and maintain the original ONE, Inc., this gross capitalistic manipulation of such an important historical resource that makes me mad enough but when people like Williams and Richard Arlington (a longtime associate of Williams and who also got arrested in this international sexual predator case), who acted as a third party procurer of young boys for Williams and himself.

Considering John O’Brien’s connection to Williams and Arlington should make any rational adult wonder whether O’Brien himself had any involvement, but as a person with an advanced education, I have to say that I don’t convict people based on associations even if the rest of our once great nation seems so eager to charge ahead on those assumptions.

The one matter I can say is that the ONE, Inc. files, transcripts, history and archives will die with the life sentence of Dr. Walter Lee Williams and Dr. Richard Arlington and John O’Brien will go down in LGBT history as the man who fired the shot that killed it.

As far as the claim of Williams being the founder of the “ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives”, that is not a false statement since the original name of ONE was ONE, Inc. Williams first portrayed his acquisition of ONE, Inc. as a “merger” when it was nothing more than a means to raise more money for his international travels and since he’s presently under a RICO writ of forfeiture, ONE becomes the property of the United States government and will likely be auctioned off. It does give us good reason to attempt to get a grant to reacquire ONE from the government auction but it will probably be purchased by some rich gay or lesbian asshole who wants to hold it hostage for big bucks like Williams did.

I’d love to hear John O’Brien’s defense of all this but I deleted his email some time back due to his “I was everywhere” yarns regarding LGBT history that were obviously 20 lbs. of bullshit in an 8 oz. can.

A Question About One Magazine

David Williams of the Williams-Nichols Collection at the University of Louisville asks:

From May to at least August 1965 there were two different versions of One Magazine.  One was edited by Don Slater and the other by Richard Conger. We have both versions of the magazine during that time. My question is, how long were the two different versions published? Did it end in August 1965, or were there different editions in  September, October, and perhaps November 1965?

Our reply:

Hello David!

Thank you so much for contacting us on this question.

When ONE, Inc. divided in the spring of 1965, Don Slater and company moved the entire operation to a new location. Even though Slater had emptied ONE’s office completely, Dorr Legg (as “Richard Conger”) was still able to continue to produce and distribute ONE Magazine (much, of course, to Slater’s dismay). Legg said that he had committed ONE’s mailing list to memory, but that's just silly. My best guess is that Legg anticipated some sort of brash act by Slater (Legg, it seems, was moving to kill ONE magazine entirely in order to grow his Institute) and had managed to have a copy of the list secured off site. (ONE’s mailing list was a highly coveted and much protected, so this is actually a very big deal, a confession Legg could never publicly make).

Soon after the division, a judge determined that Legg would keep the office and rights to the name ONE, Inc. Slater retained his materials but had to stop doing business as or representing himself as ONE. This was to be a tentative arrangement, but even after Legg continued his fruitless and expensive lawsuit against Slater for two more years, this is how things remained. 

You will find that the content of the two first dual issues is similar to identical. Some of the work was by Joe Hansen, who was devoted to Slater and would never have consented to have his work printed in Legg’s magazine, yet there it was. How Legg obtained that content remains a total mystery to me.

You can see the four covers of Slater’s magazine (clearly subtitled “The Homosexual Viewpoint” here.

I have started to post content, but work is proceeding slowly since I can only do this on a voluntary basis at the moment. As you can see, the magazine changed its name to Tangents in October, 1965. This, in a way, makes Tangents the “true” continuation of ONE magazine, with a great majority of ONE’s editorial and writing staff continuing on in this new venue. The July issue of ONE features a play on the male/female symbols that was designed by Joe Hansen's wife, Jane, and remains HIC’s logo to this day.

I have been talking to several people about bringing Tangents back as a biannual newsletter, I hope becoming quarterly in time. I will keep you posted on the progress there as this could be happening very soon.

I hope this helps to clarify. The details of this can be found in my book, Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights, published by the University of Illinois Press, if you are interested in learning more about this history. 

Best wishes,

Todd

C. Todd White, Ph.D.

Chair

Homosexual Information Center

http://www.tangentgroup.org

<todd@tangentgroup.org>

Gay Press, Gay Power: Great History

While there have been several books and efforts to discuss the history of publications in the GLBT movement / community, at last there is one that contains the basic research and expertise needed to pull into one place the basic facts, names, and information of the magazines, newspapers, newsletters that recorded that history which they helped to make. This book, Gay Press, Gay Power, edited by Tracy Baim, covers many of our movement’s publications from the start in the early 1950s to 2012. It contains new information, corrects some misinformation, and provides us with rich biographical information on the pioneering journalists who worked on these publications.

To put the history in context, there is a discussion, with examples, of the horrible coverage the media gave homosexuality until about the late 1960s, when coverage exploded after Stonewall. The publications started with the movement to gain equal rights for homosexual Americans, and thus this civil rights movement is documented by the very people who were active in the effort. A historian or researcher trying to see how coverage changed from the 1950s on could see the evidence by looking through editions of the Readers Guide to Periodicals Index.  Baim has done this for the reader.

The first publications are discussed in full in an early chapter by C. Todd White. They started during the worst of times, the McCarthy era when homosexuals and Communists were considered to be allies and were labeled as threats to the nation’s security. The first publicly available publication (1953), ONE magazine,  suffered from the same problems all early ones did: little income, people afraid to have their names as subscribers to a homosexual publication, businesses afraid to place ads, and few authors or journalists of note willing to let their names appear in the publication. There was also a problem few other causes had: there were homosexual people in hiding who tried to keep their sexuality from being questioned or discovered by loudly protesting the existence of a publication discussing homosexuality. Many such people later were arrested for homosexual acts and still refused to support the effort to educate the public and change laws.

Issue #1, Jan. 1953

But ONE was successful, and was joined by the Mattachine Review and then The Ladder, aimed toward women. The editors of ONE, led by Don Slater and attorney Eric Julber, fought a legal battle with the Post Office to protect its right to publish and mail a magazine subtitled “The Homosexual Viewpoint” and won only at the U. S. Supreme Court level in 1958. These three magazines were slowly joined by others each few years, and together they planted the seeds that are the major media the lgbt movement/community has today. The early publications were supported by an organization. Today most are independent.

The book is loaded with pictures of most of the publications covered—a great help as it shows the progression from early publications to those of today. As White says, they are “time capsules of their era.”  One clue to how things have changed is in observing the terms used in the three eras. First they were called homophile publications, then homosexual, then gay and, now gay and lesbian or lgbt.

Gay Press / Gay Power includes short biographies of some LGBT journalists who helped make the publications successful.  The index catalogs the large number of people covered and names hundreds of current LGBT publications.

Many readers will gain a sense of pride knowing the history of the GLBT media’s growth from ONE to the hundreds of publications that exist today, currently giving the community news and views, entertainment and education, continuously revitalizing those who seek to make life better for everyone and to make this a more perfect nation, for all citizens.

No historian or journalist can write on the subject without knowing the contents of this book because the history of a movement is told through the history of its publications.

Why are LGBT history books ignored by the media, including the LGBT media?

ONE example—here is a view by William Percy:

From one of Walter William’s finest students, C. Todd White’s Pre-Gay L.A. probably ranks as the best work on homosexuality yet published (University of Illinois Press). An anthropologist by training, White meticulously integrates individual biographies with institutional and social history in a charming and gripping narrative. The book is hard to put the book down because the splits and various movements in L. A. and beyond were so dramatic that one would not think it was published by a university press. It describes facts and personalities that scholars and young glbt people should want to find out about. It adheres to the finest traditions of objective scholarship; White excitingly describes how all of the major issues confronting the movement since Stonewall were discussed in depth and intelligently before that riot.  

White focused more institutional history rather than the broad-ranging sensationalized Gay L.A: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics and Lipstick Lesbians (2006). It began with the Indian village on which the Spanish built, emphasizing movie stars and celebrities. White also downsized the exaggerated role assigned to Harry Hay in Gay L.A and corrected its misuse of the term gay for the ’30s and ’40s.

What others may see in the book: RE: Todd’s book and the generic issue of getting books read.

As I would understand it, Todd marshalled all the facts on what happened at ONE, and gave readers a background, starting with early Mattachine. It could be that he gave too much for average readers, but I assume serious researchers will want to see all the notes and minutes, etc. I didn’t then, nor now.

The irony as I said to everyone then is that I am one person who has always been in a position to do what I wanted to. I have made some mistakes, as I confessed to Prof. Rodney Grunes Political Science students Friday, as I think, now, that the issue of me and the Army was more my fault than theirs, although it is probably that sooner or later I would have been kicked out for homosexuality. But I was, from a logical Army view, not a very good soldier if I fell a part when they had to change the goal of sending me to Germany—unless I reenlisted and had more time. I liked the Army and was not mistreated, even when living the last few weeks on a cot in the Headquarters Company of the First Infantry Division. But I would never have stopped having sex. I also once did not showup for KP duty when I had been ordered to do so as I thought they were wrong. I went, naturally, to the library and read magazines. Nothing ever came of it.

But few people had income from a family so that they could choose what they wanted to do, as I could take a the job at ONE, which paid nothing, really, and paid really nothing at HIC. In fact, more than once I had to put money into HIC, one time $2,000 my folks gave me to help get an issue of the magazine out.

This is being said to make it clear that Dorr should have understood, and Don, that it made no difference to me personally if I were a voting member.

I said then, and poor Todd understands that now as even Don did a few times, that I would not do anything I did not want to do. So it would give me no more “power” to be a voting member. If the board instructed me to do something I didn't want to do, I simply would refuse and if necessary, leave.

Which is what I think some editor said when she had to quite ONE as she had to do work at a job that paid her salary. It is hard to tell volunteers what to do if they don't want to. that of course was Dorr's fear. Most of ours were not too smart about the workings of ONE and didn’t care, and I didn't until Dorr stupidly started fearing what I might or might not do. It was one thing for me to not show up for work a day after I had found a good Marine, but when I actually started understanding the workings, that was threating to Dorr.