one

Magazine

EDITORIAL

Volume XVI Number 1

January/February 1972

Editor, Richard Conger, Associate Editor, James Kepner

EDITORIAL.

Contents

CHANGES COMING IN LIFE & LOVE.

by Gus W. Dyer

TWO POEMS

by Alden Kirby

IT HAPPENED IN 1953 ..

by Hollister Barnes

PROUD & UNASHAMED..

by Helen Ito

THE HOMOSEXUAL & DEMOCRACY by Thomas M. Merritt, Ph.D.

.12

WHO ARE THE REAL CRIMINALS? by Jim Kepner

..13

THE GAY MENAGERIE .

by Alan

COVER DRAWING BY

..11

ONE Magazine certainly looks different these days. The first issue in January, 1953, had a rather odd and distinctive page size. While attractive in a way it was inconvenient on several counts. So the long-familiar pocket-size format was adopted in 1954. Much study went into the matter before this current new page size was chosen. It is a size which so many publications are now using that it runs the danger of becoming a publishing cliche. Smaller magazines are stepping up to it; big ones paring down, whether for practical reasons or in a rush to conform.

We are told that this is an age of conformity and standardization, the blame usually being assigned to "technology," a very dirty word in many circles. We are urged to note how conformists, from the cities to the villages and beyond, all sit listening in simulated rapture to skillfully marketed cassettes of Stockhausen and Gesualdo. Snobbish little wine journals. on coffee tables.

In which conformist slot is ONE Magazine expected to fit? None of them, it is to be hoped. Conformity would be a cop out in view of the range of options available today. For instance, the option of beards, beads, and everyone together now "We hate Nixon." Rules here are fairly strict: bisexuality, organic food, pot, carefully stylized folk sayings and gestures. Or, there is the Middle America bit. Everyone knows what that is, even though it is difficult to get too many of the experts to come out with recognizably similar descriptions.

Conformity really isn't the newest thing around. For the past twenty years ONE Magazine has tried to avoid it and keep, if possible, just a nose ahead of the pack, exploring, defining, consciousness-raising for Gay men and women as to who, what and where they are.

What comes next? The need of the day seems to be in the direction of encouraging and strengthening the still very shaky awareness of their obligations, responsibilities and societal "placement" by so many in the Homophile Community. To fail at this could end everyone up in a corner, as just one more noisy, complaining, often unpleasant and self-pitying. minority.

Therefore, ONE Magazine will prod, cajole and plead unremittingly lest such a thing happen. Perhaps we shouldn't tell you the plan but just go ahead so skillfully that few would catch on. We should be that skillful! So we will just have to fall back on telling it the way we think it is, calling shots as we see them, and hope that some of you will like the way we do it.

Carrance, 163 Avenue de Neuilly, France 92, Neuilly

by Richard Conger,

ONE Magazine is published at $1 per copy; subscriptions $10 per year. Copyright © 1972 by ONE, Incorporated, 2256 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90006. Not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts unless postage and self-addressed envelope enclosed.

Gus W. Dyer is a rehabilitation therapist in the Middle West who has worked with psychiatric patients, alcoholics and reformatory inmates for more than twenty years. His article, "Eleven Levels of Intimacy, A Study in Loneliness," appeared in ONE Magazine, July, 1965.... The poems by Alden Kirby, and his photo, appeared in ONE's first poetry issue, Oct.-Nov., 1957, and the article by Dr. Merritt, Dean Emeritus of ONE Institute, appeared in ONE, June 1958.