Just such a challenge was ONE's suit against Otto K. Olesen, Postmaster of Los Angeles, brought in September, 1955, and concluded in ONE's favor in January, 1958, by the United States Supreme Court. In this suit ONE again was a trouble-making challenger. It was not acting defensively. Instead, ONE was forcing an arrogant public servant to defend himself against the charge that he was unlawfully interfering with the U. S. mails, and reminding him that he was a servant, not master.

The distinction is important, we feel, for it served public notice that the rights of homosexuals are equal to the rights of any citizen; that they may not be trampled upon with impunity by anyone. The case is now legal history and is cited in law schools, as well as in courts across the land wherever publishers must defend themselves against obscenity charges.

A radical extension of the rights of homosexuals as citizens has now taken place in one of our greatest states, a commonwealth having a greater population than Denmark, Norway, Sweden, or Switzerland and approximately equal that of Holland.

On the first day of 1962, according to an Associated Press dispatch, "Criminal law in Illinois leaves the horse and buggy era and enters the space age." Outstandingly to readers of ONE, "The new code also provides that it is not unlawful for homosexuals to engage in sexual relations in private so long as the participants are adults and that neither has been pressured into participating." This would appear to sound the death-knel! in Illinois of the "participating" vice-cop, as well as to draw the fangs of the blackmailer.

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How fitting that the site of this new "Emancipation Proclamation should be in Springfield, Illinois, where in 1837 Abraham Lincoln entered upon his legal and political career. Great honor is due to those in the Illinois Commission on the Sex Offender, who began their work in 1951 and published a masterly report in 1953, more than a year before the Wolfenden Committee was appointed. Equally great honor is due the members of the Bar Association of that state who piloted the legislation through its perilous course in the Legislature and to its signature by the Governor last July.

ONE finds this legislative landmark immensely heartening, for it gives the lie to those timid pessimists who are forever insisting that nothing can be done. It also confirms at the highest level ONE's contention that homosexuality is as much a basic human right as is heterosexuality.

We expect to continue for the next ten years, as we have for the past ten, and for as long as it proves necessary, unremittingly advocating the right of the homosexual to be homosexual and to live a homosexual life. Today more than ever before powerful assaults are made from every quarter upon individual rights and individual liberty. ONE urges every homosexual to wake up and to keep awake. Is there any reason why the other forty-nine states cannot join Illinois in according every citizen equal rights before the law?

If it is unpleasant to keep saying that we will no longer tolerate secondclass citizenship treatment, or being pushed around by those who have no comprehension of American traditions of freedom, then ONE intends to be unpleasant.

William Lambert

Associate Editor

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