2min chapter

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan cover image

Neil J. Young On The Gay Right

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

CHAPTER

Exploring the Bold Publication of a Pioneering Gay Magazine during the Lavender Scare

Explore the challenges faced by the Mattachine Society in publishing a groundbreaking gay magazine amidst the oppressive environment of the Cold War and the Lavender Scare, highlighting the risks taken to distribute it despite intense government surveillance.

00:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, tell us about the Mattachine Society in general. All people haven't really understood this. It was an early attempt to create some sort of political organization. And one magazine, it became a magazine, was a crucial, crucial journal. In other words, it was delivered in brown paper. But it was a really pioneering and ballsy magazine.
Speaker 1
Absolutely. So one magazine was founded, shortly after the organization was founded, early 1950s, it was an incredibly brave thing to do, to create a gay magazine and to send it out through the US Postal Service because this is the height of the Cold War, the height of the Lavender Stair, the entire federal government's apparatus is being directed to surveilling and harassing criminalizing gay persons and law enforcement is deeply engaged in doing that, even the post offices. I mean, this was one of the things that was so astonishing for me to learn as I really went into this history that I knew certainly the federal government and the State Department and all that stuff and the Lavender Scare, but the post office itself was being directed to root out anyone they suspected of homosexuality based on the materials they were receiving in a mail. Or even if they noticed, if a particular man wrote a lot of letters to other men, they would start tracking their mail because they thought, well, why is this guy writing so many letters to other guys? And then they would start tracking those other guys mail. So it was a big deal to make this magazine, to print it and to publish it and to distribute it through the US Postal Service. And in fact, the US Postal Service constantly shut it down and it ultimately went to the Supreme Court. Yes.

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