The gay men's magaz QQ and Ciao! were unabashedly liberated, but they still tered to an exclive dience.
Contents:
- ONE: THE FIRST GAY MAGAZE THE UNED STAT
- THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
- IN THE EARLY 1950S, U.S. FEDS TRIED TO KILL THE FIRST GAY MAGAZE
- ABOUT XY, US’S #1 GAY MENS PRT MAG
- NEWSWEEK VER: OBAMA ‘FIRST GAY PRINT’
- DISVERG THE “GAY LIFTYLE” THROUGH 1970S MAGAZ
ONE: THE FIRST GAY MAGAZE THE UNED STAT
Daniel Wenger on Bob Mizer, who found the first gay magaze the U.S., Physique Pictorial, and specialized photographg buff young men. * first gay magazine *
The followg year Dwight Eisenhower issued Executive Orr 10450, which said gays and lbians were perverts, crimals, mentally ill, and mt be blocked om any kd of feral employment. Come 1953, however, the Post Office oze an issue about homosexual marriage for three weeks before officials Washgton, D. A good example n be found le #5, which said ONE wouldn’t prt “scriptns of homosexualy as a practice which the thor enurag others, or wax too enthiastic about.
’s “strategy for silencg the homophile movement by prosecutg as a purveyor of smut.
THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
It won't be nearly as ntroversial as Time magaze's breastfeedg ver, but Newsweek's May 21 issue clar Barack Obama the untry's "first gay print." The acpanyg ver story was wrten by Andrew Sullivan, the popular--and openly gay--polil blogger. The magaze even giv the manr--chief a rabow halo. Obama, Sullivan wr, "had to disver his black [...] * first gay magazine *
It’s stunng, now, to have a rource that so plaly documents the spiral and promise of a long fight, down to advertisements om gay European magaz and hts at genue tersectnal support, for example the ocsnal appearance of Marv Edwards, a Black acuntant who was the lover of ONE -founr W. (Both were nnected to Knights of the Clock, a social club open to Black and whe cis gay men.
While some see this se as the first time homosexualy was ever addrsed at that level of the urts, others say wasn’t a civil rights victory, jt a loophole built so people uld keep readg porn.
On the first page of ONE’s first anniversary issue, which is also the first edn available through JSTOR, the magaze stated that “ONE do not claim that homosexuals are better or worse than anyone else, that they are special any but one sense.
IN THE EARLY 1950S, U.S. FEDS TRIED TO KILL THE FIRST GAY MAGAZE
* first gay magazine *
” This one sense, which ONE is “voted to rrectg” through “scientific, historil, and cril pots of view, ” is that gay people are not cizens.
On the whole, ONE do actively work to be tersectnal, but bee s thors were largely whe and middle-class, spe the obv prejudic gay Amerins faced durg the tim particular, there are still some tone-af moments. A 1965 profile of “an Amerin Indian homosexual named Elmer Gage” go to Elmer Colorado, publish signifint oral histori, and is aware of s otherns, and a 1959 “Report om New York” si-ey Jack Kerouac’s “rather sperate ncern” over his masculy, but that same article also lls Frank O’Hara “disappotgly stologil, ” and do not stop. Due to the foc on cizenship, ONE featur pecially extensive articl and se studi ncerng marriage and war, pecially the draft and police, who are lled “the new Nazis” a 1963 issue that also celebrated the 1957 Wolfenn Report, which stated that “homosexualy nnot legimately be regard as disease, bee many s is the only symptom.
ABOUT XY, US’S #1 GAY MENS PRT MAG
Kearful also criciz homosexuals for not fightg back, and says “the Negro has won civil rights the last few years” [sic on all unts], “not bee the Uned Stat Government is eedom-lovg and benevolent (which is not) but bee through agatn, sacrifice, and anized effort, Negro have forced society to regnize them and give them their rights. ” He then tak a plited step backwards, statg that bee “the Homophile Movement reprents another sort of revolt, ” “such eptns” will “never be necsary, ” as many magaz now “eely publish homophile views, ” and the wave of social change unrway assum “no Watts explosns are gog to be need, or likely to occur.
His notn of gayns was rmed by a “Co of Behavr” that he rerd his high-school diary: “More mascule at all tim. ” Among his mols were the gay and the straight, profsnal bodybuilrs and profsnal beach bums, llege stunts and returne om the European ont.
But there’s jt as much reason to nsir Mizer the gay Hugh Hefner—a tirels llector of physil specimens. In 1951, he found what is generally nsired the untry’s origal gay magaze, Physique Pictorial, and would ntue publishg for nearly four s**.
NEWSWEEK VER: OBAMA ‘FIRST GAY PRINT’
** In the magaze’s early years he clud no explic referenc to gay inty, though he thored d edorials agast the hypocrisi of the straight world.
DISVERG THE “GAY LIFTYLE” THROUGH 1970S MAGAZ
Although gays had long been si-eyeg the emblems of straight masculy, Mizer fed them wh new meang: the very men who had looked stoic and impassive the straight magaz seemed, unr Mizer’s directn, to be havg fun. When David Hurl, the gay pornographer and Mizer protégé, was a teen-ager Ccnati, he glimpsed Physique Pictorial_ _at a newsstand and felt, as he put to Taschen, “stantly clud, as if the men were beckong him to look.
” It appealed, Coat wrote, “to the sick half-world of homosexuals, sadists, and masochists. “Homosexualy was the standard way of life among the gged Greek warrrs, ” he wrote 1960. ” Dpe such objectns, he reportedly ma a fortune the eighti by distributg so-lled “ssn vios, ” rerdgs of photo shoots that then veered to more recreatnal Mizer’s Greek-warrr fixatn, ’s temptg to thk of him as one early source of the “body fascism” for which ntemporary gay-male culture is often maligned.
Mizer’s achievement, as a photographer and a publisher, was to take the standards of male bety as they existed and prove that gay men uld satisfy them, and be satisfied by them, too.