Hard to believe that ONE Magazine was first published 70 years becoming the first widely distributed gay publication in the United States. To celebrate the occasion the Los Angeles LGBT Center is mounting a new Exhibit that kicks off the inaugural “Circa: Queer Histories Festival,” a monthlong celebration of the seven decades of the organization that first founded the storied magazine.
Throughout the next month, known as LGBT History Month, Circa will be hosting readings such as “HIV/AIDS: A Literary History” in West Hollywood, panel conversations like “Unapologetically Whole: Queer Elders of Color Speak Out” in Santa Monica, exhibitions such as “Queer Futurism: Transcendence in Time” in the 
San Gabriel Valley, and film screenings, including of Oat Montien’s “Patpong Narcissus,” at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Echo Park.
Tony Valenzuela, executive director of the newly rebranded nonprofit One Institute (formerly One Archives Foundation), the exhibit, and the Circa festival told the LA Times that these are concerted efforts to make these various histories be rightly understood as urgent calls to present action. He added ” What we’re going through — the backlash that LGBTQ people are experiencing today — is the greatest that I’ve seen in my 30-plus-year career. I mean, not since the dark days of the AIDS epidemic. I haven’t seen such open hatred, such shamelessness around scapegoating queer and especially trans people.”
The magazine’s covers, many of which might feel rather staid in 2023, were outright scandalous in the 1950s and 1960s. So much so that readers went out of their way to avoid parading them in public. One magazine was a closeted publication. They are a central part of the “ONE Magazine at Seventy” exhibit. Their monochromatic, often abstracted, imagery (many designed by Eve Ellery) connects the work of early organizations like One Inc., the Mattachine Society, and Daughters of Bilitis with the better-known activist efforts that would later flourish following the 1969 Stonewall riots.
Labels: 2023, 70th Anniversary, CIRCA, los Angeles, One Magazine, Queer History Month
