The Most Important LGTBQ Rights Case You’ve Never Heard Of
Opening Arguments
Opening Arguments Media LLC
4.3 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
OA1183 - We continue our ongoing look at some of our favorite Warren Court-era Supreme Court cases with this one-line 1958 decision finding as a matter of law that one of the most important LGTBQ magazines in U.S. history was not publishing obscenity. We begin by trying to find anything resembling smut in the archived pages of ONE magazine before Matt explains a bit more about the history of obscenity law in the U.S. and how Roth v U.S. changed everything just before ONE’s cert petition was taken up. Jenessa gets into the proven psychological benefits of being allowed to be who you are in public, and we consider the state of obscenity law today and who still might want to use it.
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ONE, Incorporated v. Otto K Oleson: Appellant’s Opening Brief – The Tangent Group
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One, Incorporated v. Olesen, 241 F. 2d 772 - Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 1957 - Google Scholar
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U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on writ of certiorariin On e, Inc. v. Oleson immediately reversing 9th Circuit (1/13/1958)
Complete run of One magazine from 1953-1957, Internet Archive
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Cobb Stock Act named after the guy whose official seal of his organization features |
| 0:08.3 | book burning. |
| 0:19.1 | He was in love. |
| 0:20.9 | This was what all the poets wrote about. |
| 0:23.8 | But how could he be in love with Paul when Paul was a boy? |
| 0:31.2 | Hello and welcome to opening arguments. |
| 0:32.8 | This is episode 1183. |
| 0:35.3 | And this is such a fun one. |
| 0:37.1 | Real life immigration attorney and real life voting rights advocate and attorney is such a fun one. Real-life immigration attorney and real-life |
| 0:39.1 | voting rights advocate and attorney, Dr. Janessa Seymour, have the second in their series on |
| 0:44.8 | actual good decisions by the Supreme Court. Now, of course, in order to find these, they have to |
| 0:49.2 | jump in a time machine and go way, way back, because that's just how things work. But I love |
| 0:54.1 | this series. Upon listening to this episode, I was so jealous that I wasn't there for it because this is so much fun. This is such a great idea, too. We've spent so much time over the years talking about the bad cases, that this series in which Matt and Janessa are going to be looking at some of the good cases of Supreme Court history is just it's so perfect in so many ways. |
| 1:11.4 | We need the uplift. |
| 1:12.8 | We need the example of what the Supreme Court was and could again be someday, maybe. |
| 1:17.6 | And it's also just interesting history and interesting law. |
| 1:20.3 | So today we have One Inc. |
| 1:22.1 | v. Ullison, which Matt calls the most important LGBTQ rights case you've never heard of. And they're going to be reading us some smut. Some old-timey smut. What could be better? Such a good episode. I'm excited for you to hear it. I'll give you one more reminder about lot-offal movies on patreon.com slash law for the $2 and above patrons. Lots of great comments on that. It was really fun. |
| 1:49.6 | I loved doing that lot awful movies. Juror number two was the movie. Me, Lydia, Matt, and Matt's partner Casey were on that recording. And of course, Matt and Casey have the really cool |
| 1:54.9 | prosecutor slash defense attorney duo that gives so much insight to these kind of things. So a lot |
| 2:00.7 | awful movies. |
| 2:01.6 | Check it out if you haven't already. It was really good. All right. With all that out of the way, |
... |
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