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Cole Matthews

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Blog Entries posted by Cole Matthews

  1. Cole Matthews
    There is a rich tradition in the West of creating Christmas and Yuletide tales.  Both sacred and secular versions of stories populate the airwaves and Internet with versions of light in the darkness, good defeating evil, epiphanies about faith, and even simple tales of happily ever after.  While we love to challenge conventions in these prompts.  Sometimes it is fun to go with the flow.  For these prompts, I'd like to challenge writers to create some wonderful stories of love winning, light conquering darkness, and the beautiful idea of good overcoming evil.  
    Prompt #99 - You drink a glass of sparkling cider.  At first you feel a bit silly, but then things become a little crazy, because it's not just cider.  Tell us an extraordinary Christmas tale.
    Prompt#100 - On a cold, wintery night, there is a woman panhandling on the corner of a department store.  Feeling generous, you give her some money.  What happens next?
  2. Cole Matthews
    December offers such a wealth of subject matter on which we can write.  There are the parties with friends.  Gatherings with relatives.  The symbols and holidays are liberally sprinkled throughout the month. I wanted to explore some different paths this year beyond Christmas.
    Prompt #93 - Winter Solstice - You are invited to a bonfire on December 20th in the middle of a clearing in the woods.  The snow blankets in a thick layer on the grass and coats the tree limbs.  There are tents with festive colors, flagons of mead, urns of hot apple cider and barrels of cold beer.  What happens next?
    Prompt #94 - Saturnalia - Use the following words in a story: pork sausage, green and gold, moon, sun, fertility rod, sickle, and "king for a day".  
    Have fun preparing for the other holidays coming up later in the month!
  3. Cole Matthews

    November, Remember

    By Cole Matthews,


    Prompts
    November is a month for remembering things.  Whether it's the Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November, with Guy Fawkes day, or November 11th, the Armistice Day commemorating The Great War, World War I, this is a month for looking back over past events.  Therefore, I'm suggesting prompts that have to do with remembering events of the past.
    #87 List of items: rosemary, a diary, a chest, RAM, elephant, and a red poppy
    #88  Your main character lost his memory.  What brings it back?  
  4. Cole Matthews

    October is Coming Out!!!

    By Cole Matthews,


    Prompts
    In October in the United States, we celebrate National Coming Out Day.  But that really doesn't do it justice.  Coming out isn't a day or a week or a month.  Coming out is a process for most of us.  It's intensely personal, incredibly liberating, and extremely terrifying for most people.  Let's practice our writing skills with some characters who are coming out of the closet, are remembering their emergence, or even contemplating doing it.  
    #81 - First Line - "How could you have outed me like that?"
    #82 - Use the following words in a story about coming out of the closet, any closet.  Rainbow flag, bear, twunk, femme, butch, glitter, monster, and poppers.  
    Come out, come out, wherever you are!
  5. Cole Matthews
    Vacation!!
    Nothing stimulates the recreative juices like a getaway.  Here we are in the middle of July with a lake beckoning, the hammock swaying gently between two trees, and a grill smoking away with barbequed delights searing and sizzling.  A cold, condensed mist trickles down the side of a glass of lemonade, or an adult beverage, and a dog-eared open book splays on your lap as the birds chirp and the squirrels wrestle. 
    Maybe it’s time to relax and try a new prompt!  Pull out the computer or writing pad, wipe your brow, and try these on for size.
    #67 – Ice Cream Truck – From around the corner, there is the jingle-jangle song of an ice cream truck.  The white vehicle is festooned with pictures of various, colorful chilly delectables.  It comes to a stop in front of your house.  You approach, excited to get a delicious treat.  You order, hand over your money, and the ice cream man hands you something.  It’s cold, but it’s not edible.  What is it and what does it do to you?
    #68 – The Lifeguard – You go to the beach and see a figure sitting atop a tall chair watching swimmers.  The person looks vaguely familiar, and then they look down at you.  Who is it and what happens next?
  6. Cole Matthews
    When writing a story, we need lots of different tools and techniques.  Sometimes these may include using different styles of writing or even bringing to life challenging or even repugnant characters.  To practice these different techniques, I've given a couple of exercises.  
     
    #75 - Use the Passive Voice in a vignette.  For example, "Jenny was a great writer who once won an award.  She had written a story that garnered lots of attention and cause quite an uproar.  That excitement passed and she has since given up the craft."  As another example, obituaries or objective reports on findings use the passive voice.  While it's not terribly compelling, passive voice has many uses and it can make the rhythm of your story more varied and interesting.    
     
    #76 - Your character is a compulsive liar, unable to stop themselves from spinning tales that make them the envy of everyone around them. Then they wake up one day to discover that their lies have all come true…
    Happy Writing!
  7. Cole Matthews
    Maybe summer has just begun, according to the summer solstice.  But, we get to treat the month of July as the middle point of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.  Midsummer is a fantastic time of picnics, parades, hanging out at the lake or the ocean or the pool, and letting the sun and fun wash over you.  Let's play with our characters at a bright and cheery midsummer setting or even in a dark and spooky midsummer's night.  
     
    #61 - You're at a cookout and there is an attractive young man standing by himself.  You venture over and introduce yourself.  He says, "Nice to meet you, my name is Robin Goodfellow."  What is your story?
     
    #62 - Use the following words in a story.  Strawberry pie, eyeball, changeling, hot dogs, tennis bracelet, and beach towel.  
  8. Cole Matthews
    The warm, long days of summer are just beginning.  In fact, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere occurs in just two weeks.  We celebrate Father's Day, Flag Day, and the beginning of the summer break for students.  And, it's Gay Pride Month!!  There is so much to write about.
    First, let's do a random word one.
    Prompt #55 - Use all the following words in a story.  It can be about anything, of any length, but it must include these words:  Bug, frigid, oozes, sidecar, bandana, and corndog.
    Prompt #56 - Write a story about the longest day a character ever had.  Why is it long?  Who else is there?  Let's get to know the person intimately.
    HAVE FUN WITH IT!!!!
  9. Cole Matthews
    I love murder mysteries, but I love other kinds of writing as well.  Whether it's Tolkien or Asimov, I can really enjoy a good sci fi series or a great book of fantasy.  So, I'll offer up a couple of prompts in those genres.  Please simply take the kernel of the idea and play with it.  You don't need it to follow the prompt exactly.  It's the concept that's fun.  Try something different!!!
     
    Prompt #49 - The Lycan Hunter - A werewolf hunter hears about a pack on the other side of the county.  He drives to the glade in the dark of night, finds the wolves have surrounded a victim.  Chasing them away, he discovers his boyfriend was bitten and will turn.  What does he do?
     
    Prompt #50 - You are receiving emails, and they predict various things.  You will win a pulltab if you play.  Then you do.  Don't eat at the new Indian restaurant, you'll get sick.  You end up throwing up. 
    You get an email that warns you, "Don't wait.  Run for your life." 
     
    Since we've reached 50 prompts, we wanted to do something special and here's the tie-in with the below challenge.  Thanks for all the fun!!!!
     
  10. Cole Matthews
    Prompt 39
    April 23rd is Shakespeare's birthday.  Since April is Poetry Month and I'm absolutely horrible at writing poetry, I'm at a disadvantage, to say the least.  However, I'm always game to try something new, so I challenge our faithful readers and writers to a duel, you know, Tudor style.
    In honor of the Bard of Avon's birthday, let's do sonnets.  I found an explanation, which I still don't really understand, but I think I get the gist of it.  
    A sonnet is a 14 line poem.  It has four sets of four lines that rhyme thusly:
    a, b, a, b
    c, d, c, d
    e, f, e, f
    g, h, g, h
     
    And then, the last two lines rhyme with each other.  
    I guess the last two lines either sum up the subject, or surprise the reader with a twist.  
    The subject of the sonnet should be a unifying theme, like a summer's day, or a fresh blueberry pie, or what you found at the bottom of the sink drain after you cleaned it out.  You decide!
    Therefore, I submit my terrible attempt and you must do better than me, or you lose. If you don't try, you lose and then Henry the VIII will get to marry you and chop off your head or Elizabeth will defeat you at sea, or something equally as embarrassing.  
    So, pull out your quill and ink, grab a piece of vellum, and get to work, wenches!!!
    Prompt 40
    Write a poem about one of Shakespeare's characters.  It can be a love poem to the hunky Romeo.  It may be a dirge about MacBeth.  It could be a limerick about Puck, and how he like to pluck, flowers from the garden.  
  11. Cole Matthews

    Let there be Spring!!!

    By Cole Matthews,


    Prompts
    Aaaaahhhh...The Vernal Equinox approaches.  "The March equinox – also called the vernal equinox – marks the beginning of the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere and the autumn season in the Southern Hemisphere. The March 2022 equinox will arrive on March 20 at 15:33 UTC. That’s 10:33 a.m. Central Daylight Time." - EarthSky website [https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-vernal-or-spring-equinox/]
     
    Oh, and it's Randy's birthday too!  But enough about personal matters.  
    Spring is a time of rebirth, new growth, the sprouting of seeds,  and yes, even the burst of creative ideas to get your fertile mind growing again.  Here are a couple of ideas for Spring cleaning your mind and getting your characters to grow.  
    #31 - List of words; rhubarb, raindrops, baby bunny, polliwog, and snowdrop
     
    #32 - Situation; Two old high school friends reunite every spring, but this year is something very special.  What is different?
  12. Cole Matthews

    Happy Fairy Tale Day...

    By Cole Matthews,


    Prompts
    Who doesn't love a fairy tale?  They are the stuff of childhood, memories of the distant past, lessons for the present, and fodder for the future.   This coming weekend is Tell a Fairy Tale Day.  So, I proposed we tell each other some fairy tales, based on the tropes and ideals of the genre.  Hopefully these prompts will get you conjuring up your own scenarios of a child eating someone else's porridge or a lonely orphan girl who meets her prince, only to flee at midnight.
     
    #25 - Story beginning with, "Once upon a time, in a forest..."
     
    #26 - Gender Bender - Take a traditional fairy tale and reverse the roles.  For example, instead of Rapunzel letting down her hair for the prince to climb up and fall in love with her.  Instead a boy, let's call him Campanulo, does so and a warrior princess comes to save him.  
  13. Cole Matthews
    St. Valentine's Day is drawing near.  While many people don't enjoy the holiday, others revel in the blooming of new love, the sprouting of true love, and the enduring promise of "ever after." 
    I happen to love the celebration.
    When I was a teen, I never knew what the poets meant when they'd write about the earth moving and the heavens exploding.  I never really understood how a kiss was that special.  For me it was just a kiss, kinda fun, but not really that big of a deal.  [Mind you, I was kissing girls at that point]
    Then, I met someone special, and I understood. 
    Later on after getting to know Randy, he talked about how love was something that made your socks go up and down.  I think love is when the thunder and lightning jolt your night.  It's when you see that special someone, and your heart flutters.  For me, it's touching a hand that makes it all seem okay.   So, give us your interpretations of love, and the celebration of all that it means.
     
    #19 Prompt Idea  Cupid is a fickle creature.  You ask for a Valentine, but his arrow hits someone you never expected.  What is the story?
    #20 Prompt First Line.  "You'll never believe how we first met."
  14. Cole Matthews
    January is named for the Roman god Janus, who was the patron of beginnings, endings, and the nature of a doorway or threshold.   The Janus Society was an early homophile organization out of Philadelphia in the 1960s and was one of the earliest organizations of gays, lesbians, and gender non-conforming people of the era.  
    Prompt #13 The Janus Society's president had a magazine called, "Drum" and in 1965, it was the first U.S. magazine to show a nude male from the front.  What is his story? Where did he come from and how was he chosen?
     
    Prompt #14 Or, this coin depicting Janus was found on an archeological dig in southern France.  Tell us a story about how it was found.  

  15. Cole Matthews

    Christmas Eve Prompts

    By Cole Matthews,


    Prompts
    Brrr!! It's so cold and dark this time of year.  Time to put on that cardigan sweater, you know, the one with the patches on the elbows, pull out your trusty computer, sit by a roaring fireplace and let your imagination go wild.  Or, if you don't have a roaring fireplace, maybe write about one!
    There is a fireplace blackened with soot.  But, as you're about to pile in some wood, there is something sticking out from the corner.  What is it?

    Immerse yourself in the mood and write a poem or short story.
     
    Or use a little of both.  In the meantime, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!
  16. Cole Matthews
    With the holiday season beginning to heat up, let's stretch our writer muscles and creativity with some prompts!!  Here are my first offerings into our wonderful winter writing.  
    PT 3#
    Holiday Quote - "Let's do something that puts us on Santa's naughty list."
    PT 4#
    You've played Santa at the mall for the past twenty-five years, but after dealing with bratty kids, entitled parents, and a total lack of manners, you've decided you're done after this season.  It's taken all your willpower not to have your Grinchy heart snap, but you've gotten through it.  It's Christmas eve and the last kid in the last line you'll ever see as Santa completely changes your mind and renews your Christmas spirit.  What happened?
     
    Keep in mind, prompts are never really retired.  If you don't think of something this week, you may be inspired next week and let's see those entries!
    Your Prompt Team.
  17. Cole Matthews
    Someone asked what my Monster Cookie recipe is. Here it is! As you can see, it's gluten free so I can make them for my mom!
     
    3 eggs
    1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
    1 cup white sugar
    1/2 tsp salt
    1 tsp vanilla
    1 1/2 cups peanut butter (cheap brand works best. The expensive type that separates won't work right.)
    1 stick butter
    1 cup M&M's or chocolate chips
    1/2 cup chopped peanuts
    1/2 cup Craisins, or raisins
    2 tsp baking soda
    5 cups quick-cooking oatmeal
     
    Cream sugars and softened butter. Add eggs and vanilla and continue creaming. Then add peanut butter and blend. In a separate bowl, add salt, oatmeal, soda, and other ingredients. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together mixing well. Then let the mixture sit for an hour. This step is necessary to let the oatmeal soften. Place a portion the size of a walnut on the baking sheet and press down. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for around eight to ten minutes. Pull before the centers brown completely. Let rest before removing and putting on wax paper on a cookie rack.
     
    Enjoy!
  18. Cole Matthews
    On our recent trip, we did some antiquing and I found several fun old cookbooks. I think I will present some of my most interesting findings over the next couple of weeks. If you like cooking, eating, history, or goofiness, it should be enjoyable. Of course I am easily amused
     
    Let's begin our old cookbook adventure. I started collecting these chestnuts from history because I love eating, the past, and of course reading. Soon I found so many interesting things about how food, cooking, and the interaction with technology and sociology shape culture. My first example I present from this past vacation is a tome entitled 'Housekeeping in Old Virginia'. This book was first published in 1879. The copy I purchased is a reprint, but it's the content that matters to me most.
     

    This book is a compilation of many cooks' contributions much like a church cookbook from today. What's unique about this collection is the depth of its study into the recipes. Until this point, previous cookbooks were concerned about managing a household along with general food preparation. This book almost exclusively deals with actual recipes and not how much it costs to employ a maid or what silver to use with oysters. From Marion Cabell Tyree:
     
    "It will be seen that she is indebted to near 250 contributors to her book. Among these will be found many names famous through the land. Associated with them will be discovered other of less national celebrity, but who have acquired among their neighbors an equally merited distinction for the beautiful order and delightful cuisine of their homes."
     
    I find this fascinating for several reasons. Perhaps one of the most important is the author felt compelled to support her writing with celebrity endorsements. She is also concerned with pleasing others with her cooking. Not too much different from today, it appears.
     
    Anyway, here is a tasty recipe if you'd like.
     
    Brunswick Stew
     
    About four hours before dinner, put on two or three slices of bacon, two squirrels or chickens, one onion sliced, in one gallon of water. Stew some time, then add one quart peeled tomatoes, two ears of grated corn, three Irish potatoes sliced, and one handful butter beans, and part pod of red pepper.
     
    Stew altogether about one hour, till you can take out the bones. When done, put in one spoonful bread crumbs and one large spoonful butter. - Mrs. M.M.D.
     
    Now, I don't expect most of you to run out and trap or hunt down some squirrels for stewing. I also think it speaks powerfully of the era. Keep in mind, chickens for stewing weren't the nice, tender spring chickens we see in the grocery store today. A stew chicken would be an old bird that needed as much cooking as a stringy and bitter squirrel would to become tasty. Brunswick stew is a recipe to redeem rather marginal ingredients to become something sustaining.
     
    In addition, I love the fact we are using both butter and bacon in this recipe. Delish!!! Until later...
  19. Cole Matthews

    First Kiss

    By Cole Matthews,

    First Kiss
     
    Imagine this:
     
    You are seated with your fiancée in a movie theater in the late 1920’s. Your arm is around her but your eyes are drawn to the man sitting a few seats away. You’ve had these feelings your whole life, but you can’t act on them. It’s illegal. It’s immoral.
     
    It’s wrong.
     
    You played around with your best friend as a kid. Those feelings evoked a response that aroused you like no girl ever had. The movie is about to begin. It’s a story set a few years ago during The Great War.
     
    Not too far away, there is a woman sitting with her husband. His hand lies possessively over hers. She’s thinking about last night. She feels guilty because it never should have gone that far. But her best friend’s kisses were so much sweeter than her husband’s. Why? It wasn’t the right thing for a woman to do with another woman, but the temptation was too great.
     
    The screen starts to flicker in the silence of the theater. The organ and a couple of other instruments start playing as the opening credits roll.
     
    It’s the acclaimed movie “Wings” that everyone has been talking about. In the starring role is “The It Girl” Clara Bow.
     
    The movie has nudity. It’s shocking how they show soldiers getting physicals with flashes of the male rear end and Clara Bow’s naked breasts make a split second appearance.
     
    What really strikes you and the woman with equally as impure thoughts, is a kiss between two men. It’s not a simple peck on the lips. It lingers as one best friend says goodbye to the other. While silent films are more expressive than sound pictures would be, it is powerful. This depicts two men who loved each other dearly saying farewell. From http://www.filmsite.org/sexinfilms3.html
     
    Handsome young soldier John "Jack" Powell (Charles "Buddy" Rogers) placed a lingering fraternal kiss on the mouth of his dying friend David Armstrong (Richard Arlen), with the title card reading:
    "You - you know there is nothing in the world that means so much to me as your friendship" followed by: "I knew it - - all the time - - "
     
    The movie “Wings” isn’t an art or foreign film. This picture won the Academy Award for “Best Production.” It was a long running movie that had millions of viewers. The Digital Fix explains it like this:
     
    “Wings was a huge hit, running for over two years at its first engagement cinemas. In some venues it showed as a Magnascope presentation: a process where some sequences of the film was projected on a considerably larger screen, rather like IMAX except without the large-format film stock. It helped that Charles Lindbergh's successful transatlantic flight had fuelled a popular interest in aviation, so this film undoubtedly tapped into a popular mood. Sadly though, the coming of sound, later the same year, rendered silent films like this obsolete in the eyes of many studios…”
     
    The context of the film doesn’t matter. Nor does the fact the two men were battling over the heart of Clara Bow’s character. What is significant is the display of these two men’s affection for one another in such a poignant way. How would you feel seeing that? What would your thoughts and emotions be after watching it on the screen? At this point in history, there were no places for men or women to meet each other. This scene sparks hope and promise I think. It may not strictly be a moment in gay history, but I believe it was one that may have lit a fire in some hearts.
     
    Read more: http://film.thedigitalfix.com/content/id/77369/wings-masters-of-cinema.html#ixzz3AZcIqe9r
     
    If you’d like to watch the scene of the two men saying goodbye, it can be found here:

  20. Cole Matthews
    The Unsolvable Riddle
     
    Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a reporter and lawyer, began writing a series of tracts which when finished in 1879 was called “The Riddle of Man-Manly Love.” In these booklets, he discusses the nature of sexuality including the innate quality of some men to love other men exclusively. As with Karl Kertbeny, Ulrichs wasn’t happy with the common references to gay men such as pederast or sodomite. He created some Greek referenced terms for sexual identity, Dioning for straight men and Urning for gay ones.
     
    Hubert Kennedy has written extensively about Ulrichs and his writings. Below is a link to one of his papers and it’s a fascinating read if you’d like. Ulrichs opines about “animal magnetism” of the draw between two lovers as well as about Urnings and Dionings. Here is a quote of his as he struggles to explain his idea of the innately Urning man.
     
    “This outwardly recognizable female essence I call the female habitus of the Urning. . . The female habitus is quite particularly in us in our childhood, before we have been reared into an artificial masculinity, and before we have had the depressing experience that every expression of our female essence will be ascribed to us as a disgrace (!) by our playmates as well as adults, before, that is, suffering under this external pressure, we began to carefully hide that female trait.
     
    The Urning shows as a child a quite unmistakable partiality for girlish activities, for interaction with girls, for playing with girls’ playthings, namely also with dolls.”
     
    (Inclusa, 13–14)” Kennedy page 9.
     
    Obviously, Ulrichs was trying hard to explain his own Urning nature had been from childhood and therefore innate and not “made” or “influenced” into gayness. He was making the same point as his contemporary Karl Kertbeny that gays weren’t created but had their preference from birth.
     
    It’s interesting how many of Ulrichs’ characterizations became stereotypes of “gay behavior” or noticing “gayness” in people. Attributing female attributes or tendencies would become the norm in western culture. We have to remember though that Ulrichs and Kertbeny were making an important point. Homosexuals or Urnings weren’t adopting non-normative sexual desires. They were simply expressing how they felt not perverting nature.
     
    Ulrichs soon found there were other men who identified as Urning but didn’t have the “female essence.” Instead of finding this “third sex” as being consistently effeminate, he discovered there were several men who were attracted to and desired other men but weren’t “carefully hiding the female trait.” They simply were oriented towards other men.
     
    Ulrich created other categories within the Urning system of classification to accommodate this. Here is a simple representation of what he found.
     
    The Human Male:
    A. Dioning(1) “Heterosexual”
    B. Urning(2) “Homosexual”
    1. Mannling(3) “Straight acting and appearing homosexual”
    2. Weibling(4) “An effeminate homosexual”
    3. Zwischen(5) “A homosexual who exhibited male and female traits”
    4. Virilised(6) “A homosexual who is with a woman”
    C. Urano-Dioning(7) “A bisexual”
     
    What Ulrichs stumbled across was the spectrum of sexualities. Without intending to, he discovered sexuality wasn’t an either/or proposition. Eighty years later, Kinsey would measure sexual behavior in males and find the same kind of array. He developed a scale which measured human male sexuality into a rubric. Ulrichs wasn’t a researcher in the sense he had a formal academic study with subjects and control groups. Yet, he managed to find that human sexuality was something quite remarkable and diverse.
     
    Ulrichs’ work wasn’t transformative like later activists would be. But, this German Urning found that like Gay Authors writers and readers, sexuality, love, and human behavior, is a rich source of ideas and expressions. His work over a hundred and fifty years ago is fascinating.
     
    The question of sexuality will never be answered. However, it sure is interesting exploring it.
     
    http://hubertkennedy.angelfire.com/FirstTheorist.pdf
     
    http://www.lgbtdata.com/karl-ulrichs-sexual-orientation-classification-scheme.html
  21. Cole Matthews
    In “The Bachelor Farmer” I portray the dissemination of a term, ‘homosexelles’ to describe men loving other men and women loving other women. Prior to Kertbeny’s new word in the late nineteenth century, only terms that described sex acts were used to define gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. Over time that word, “homosexual,” came into common usage and a new identity group was born. However, being a homosexual wasn’t necessarily embraced by the general public including governments around the world.
     
    In the 1950’s, a few men and women in the United States created a couple of groups to advocate for homosexuals. The Mattachine Society was generally the gay group while the Daughters of Bilitis was for lesbians. The Mattachine Society in Los Angeles decided the send out a magazine, a newsletter really, that published ideas relating to people with sexual identities that weren’t the norm.
     
    However, they ran head first into a problem. Publishing their little magazine called “ONE” outside the immediate area meant using the United State Postal Service (USPS). Oops!
     
    The Comstock Act gave the USPS broad censorship powers allowing it to decide if the content it was conveying was obscene and therefore subject to seizure. The postmaster in LA, Otto K. Olesen, refused to send through the mail an issue in 1954. Deb Price and Joyce Murdoch describe what happened next in their book, ‘Courting Justice’.
     
    “After an 11-month delay that Julber [ONE’s pro bono general counsel] attributed to the magazine’s financial woes, ONE filed suit in federal court against Los Angeles postmaster Olesen, challenging the decision that the October 1954 issue was unmailable. Ironically, the cover of the disputed issue declared, ‘You Can’t Print It!’ In the anonymous cover article ‘by ONE’s legal counsel,’ Julber explained the censorship guidelines he’d cautiously instituted in trying to ensure that ONE did not run afoul of the federal law against mailing obscene material.” Page 31, 2001.
     
    First the district federal court and then the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Post Office. The appeals court confirmed the findings of the district court which said the following:
     
    “1. The story "Sappho Remembered" appearing on pages 12 through 15, is obscene because lustfully stimulating to the homosexual reader.
     
    2. The poem "Lord Samuel and Lord Montagu", appearing on pages 18 and 19, is obscene because of the filthy language used in it.
     
    3. The advertisement for the Swiss publication "The Circle" appearing at the top of page 29, is non-mailable matter because it gives information for the obtaining of obscene matter.”
     
    http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7911273081513480843&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr
     
    ONE, INCORPORATED v. OLESEN, 241 F.2d 772 (9th Cir. 1957)
     
    What’s fascinating about this decision is the federal district court decided it wasn’t just ONE’s content that was obscene but it found that merely by publishing the contact information for another periodical, “The Circle,” it was sending out illegal material.
    Simply talking about being a homosexual was considered lewd and lascivious.
     
    Shortly thereafter something quite amazing occurred. We tend to think the “Stonewall Riots” were the beginning of the GLBT community’s efforts to be recognized. But, could “Stonewall” have happened without the idea of the ‘homosexual’ and the fact we were becoming a community by communicating with one another? Since I don’t like counterfactuals, I can’t say. In 1958 the United States Supreme Court decided the lower courts were wrong. They found the Postal Service couldn’t deny ONE access to the mail.
     
    Strangely enough, there isn’t any written decision. The Supreme Court merely struck down the Ninth Circuit and federal district court’s findings as a matter of law. They referred to another of their court decisions as their basis for striking down the USPS’s actions.
     
    http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/355/371
     
    In what could be described as a ‘silent nod,’ the Supreme Court said we could publish our poems, our stories, our ideas to others. We would no longer be forced to harmonize in the chorus. The GLBT community could step up and sing their ‘unchained melody’ if we’d like.
     
    This decision isn’t highly celebrated. However, it opened up a floodgate of our ideas. When people are allowed to write, publish, and debate their ideas, things happen. I chose this decision, this event as my first post for a good reason. Take advantage of your voice and tell us your stories.
     
    Sing your unchained melody.
  22. Cole Matthews
    From time to time, I'm going to be posting short essays on this blog about historical events affecting the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and affiliated community. The purpose is to show some snapshots in time of where our community has been and how through time we've gained acceptance, found hope, and created a shared identity.
     
    Not all the stories I'm sharing are happy ones, but I think you'll see even during trying times, people with alternative sexualities learned, grew, and took steps to make things better for the next generation. History is a messy subject so not all that's presented will show a clean model of advancement.
     
    I encourage people to make comments and discuss these topics on the blog. I'll be posting a link in the Promising Authors forum, but NO, and I mean, NO political discussions can occur there. Please be respectful because we all have our own ideas and reactions to these events. Be an example of how we are open to diverse thoughts and ideas.
     
    Another reason I'm doing this is to give writers historical events that may influence or even prompt characters or scenes. Much of our shared history is quite fascinating. I encourage you to consider setting a story in another era or using the topics to enliven your characters.
     
    That being said, I will post my first essay this Tuesday. It's called "Unchained Melody."
     
    I hope you'll join me in reliving a vibrant, sometimes trying, history of the GLBT community.
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