Comments on: Homosexuality and Free Speech: The 1958 ONE Case

By: vijayakumar

vijayakumar — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 09:03:55 +0000

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By: admin

admin — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 15:41:36 +0000

You’re right that I offered no evidence on what J. Edgar Hoover did or thought. As far as this legal case goes, though, it is a lawsuit brought by a magazine that wanted delivery service by the US mail despite claims of obscenity. It had nothing to do with criminal prosecution, and at neither the appellate nor the Supreme Court level did the court reasoning have anything to do with advocacy. The Supreme Court was terse, and the 9th Circuit specifically and in great detail says that the issue is whether the publication was obscene, not its advocacy. Not every detail of the comment I criticized was false, but some details were, and that casts doubt on other details, such as claims about J. Edgar Hoover’s state of mind.

By: ThePolitic.com » UK Arrests Homosexuality Protestor

ThePolitic.com » UK Arrests Homosexuality Protestor — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:48:46 +0000

[...] Eric Rasmusen asks the interesting question: has anyone ever been arrested for advocating homosexual behavior (in the US)? He thinks no, and considers the evidence. [...]

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:05:22 +0000

I’m curious. You write “It turns out that there was no prosecution of the magazine at all. Rather, the lawsuit was started by the magazine, which asked the court to issue an injunction forcing Postmaster-General Olesen to send the magazine by U.S. mail” as if that somehow contradicts what’s in the original poster’s comment: “Once issued, however, The US Post Office siezed 600 hundreds copies of the first issue, declared it obsene. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, became obsessed over the issue, and was determined to crush ONE, and began investigations on any criminal sanctions that could be imposed on the mag or the people behind it. ONE filed a lawsuit, lost at every level, but finally the SCOTUS ruled in its favor. One v. Olesen (1958).” But I don’t see any contradictions between those. Both say that the post office siezed/refused to distribute the magazine (they don’t just give them back when they’re found to be too obscene to distribute), and that ONE initiated the suit, that ONE lost all the way up to the 9th Circuit. You have offered no evidence one way or the other regarding what J. Edgar Hoover thought of the publication or whether he started an investigation or looked for ways (outside this particular case) to legally hassle the publishers of ONE, as the initial post indicated he had.