Great Vintage LGBT History!

Excellent choice of Time Magazine with “I Am A Homoesexual” article from 1975 (and shipped from France)! I loved reading it. Also great to add to my library were these vintage magazine. They were the major source of print and visual culture for gay men before Stonewall. These physique magazine publishers fostered burgeoning communities by, for example, starting pen-pal clubs and gatherings that allowed readers to interact with photographers and editors and with one another. Many physique photographers, collectors, and a few models were harassed by the police and by the U.S. Postal Service in the 1950s and 1960s, and a few of them served prison sentences. In 1962, though, the U.S. Supreme Court heard an obscenity case centered on physique magazines in MANual Enterprises v. Day, and ruled 6-1 in the magazines' favor, thereby easing restrictions on what could be distributed in the mail. Though the Supreme Court maintained that the magazines were aimed at the "prurient interests" of readers, it asserted that "prurient interest" was not a sufficient criterion for defining obscenity, insisting that truly "obscene" materials were also "patently offensive"—and that the physique magazines were not.