INTRODUCTION xxi pronouncement) and insisted that he was neither lewd nor criminal. He helped educate the jury about the process of entrapment and how homosexuals were tar- gets of police abuse. The defense attorney caught the arresting offi cer lying on the witness stand. The jury was hung (11 wanted acquittal, 1 wanted conviction), and the judge dismissed the case. Although this was the fi rst successful defense against police entrapment, none of the mainstream media carried the story. The Mattachine Society set up another organization to publish a newsletter— ONE Inc . It began publication in January 1953 and was the voice of the homo- phile movement. The U.S. postmaster seized copies of ONE on grounds that it was “obscene, lewd, lascivious and fi lthy” and refused to allow the newsletter to be sent by U.S. mail. ONE sued, eventually winning an U.S. Supreme Court deci- sion ( One, Inc. v. Olesen ). The Court ruled in 1958 that homosexual materials were not automatically deemed “obscene” and could be sent via the mail. This was a very important decision. Without the right to send materials through the mail the fl edging gay rights movement would have been signifi cantly hampered. In 1953, Joseph McCarthy called Mattachine Foundation legal advisor Fred M. Snyder to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. McCarthy considered Snyder an unfriendly witness and attempted to defame and humiliate him. At the same time, the Mattachine Society held a convention in Los Angeles. With over 500 representatives, it was the largest such gathering of homosexuals in U.S. history. A power struggle ensued between the founders, who were leftist, and those who wanted a more moderate, liberal organization. The liberal factions won out, and the old Mattachine Foundation board resigned. Over the next 40 years, the Mattachine Society/ONE Inc. evolved, changed names a number of times, fl oundered, regrouped, but survived. Currently, it is mostly a library and archive collection located on the campus of the University of Southern California (USC) and is named ONE National Gay & Archives. It con- tains the largest collection of homosexual books, magazines, articles, paintings, and memorabilia in the world with more than two million catalogued items. Soon after the formation of the Mattachine Society in California, homosexuals in New York began meeting informally in a group called the League. Sam Morford and Tony Segura were frustrated by the fl imsy nature of the League and decided in December 1955 to launch the Mattachine Review and Mattachine Society New York (MSNY). Approximately 30 persons attended the fi rst meeting of MSNY at the Diplomat Hotel. The organizers had to work with extreme caution because homosexuality was a felony in New York State and punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Women were always involved with the Mattachine Society, although they con- stituted a very small percentage of the membership. Inspired by its success, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon in 1956 transformed their lesbian social club into a les- bian activist organization named the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB): the fi rst national lesbian organization in the United States. (Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon would become the fi rst same-sex couple to be legally married in the United States in 2004.) The name came from Pierre Louÿs’s narrative “Song of Bilitis,” in which Bilitis is a lesbian poet and disciple of Sappho who lived in ancient Greece on the
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