Don Slater’s Editorial Report
for ONE Magazine

Dated January 30, 1959

Report presented to ONE, Incorporated during their annual board meeting on Friday, January 30th, 1959.

EDITORIAL REPORT

What is ONE Magazine trying to accomplish and what is it trying to say? These are the two questions the editors have been concentrating on this year.

Basically, ONE Magazine is a propaganda device to put the homosexual point of view across. How best to accomplish this is the constant challenge. Propaganda must be prettied up and made palatable. But it must not lose its force. The editors of ONE are consequently faced with the problem of saying just as much as we can each issue—going just as far as we can with our views—without risking being closed up by various authorities and agencies. 1958 has been a year of printing all the traffic will allow, as it were.

Gradually we have begun presenting homosexuality as a “way of life.” We have placed less emphasis on outside authority and scientific reports. The latter material cannot be ignored and will always have a place in ONE. But what we have to say has to be written by our people. You will find the real message in our editorials and lead articles written by homosexuals. Fiction and poetry are absolutely essential. Things can be said by these mediums that could hardly be expressed otherwise. There is still a need for name authors to create interest and boost sales. You will see less and less material on the details and personal side of the Corporation in ONE. This area of discussion will be taken up by ONE Confidential.

A topic that has not received attention in the past and that we would like to introduce as a goal for 1959 is the question of advocacy. Can we, should we advocate homosexuality? Some say no, it would be too bold a step. The column expressing the psychiatric viewpoint, written by Blanche Baker, M.D., beginning with the January 1959 number, will tackle just such problems and may be a means of exploring subjects heretofore held taboo.

ONE Magazine is faced with the problem of not being able to pay for manuscripts. Writers must eat. And the best ones get paid for their work; or at least they work for those that pay them. Until ONE can pay we cannot expect truly professional writing.

The Feminine Viewpoint has been weak during 1958; it has been from the advent of The Ladder. The girls apparently prefer the seclusion of their own magazine. We at ONE feel that a magazine for and about both the male and female homosexual is more realistic and more to be desired. Whether the Feminine contingent can be strengthened during 1959 remains to be seen.

As a means of increasing sales, a number of photographs have been introduced during 1958 and more will be added in 1959. The work of Eve Elloree, ONE’s Art Director, continues to distinguish ONE’s pages. The editors wish the contents could always reach the mark of the art work.

Don Slater Editor

This page was created by C. Todd White from information gathered while researching his doctoral dissertation, Out of Many… A Social History of the Homosexual Rights Movement. Dr. G. Alexander Moore was director of White’s dissertation committee, in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.