Zines – Part 4
Page 11
We now come to the final part of this Zines project as ‘Queerly Beloved’ enters the interactive section. The title of this section of the magazine is ‘Absolute Zines’ largely as a play on the words ‘absolute scenes’ as I feel this highlights the drama of the times we are covering – especially for queer people and those who were determined to stop any improvement to their lives.
Page 12
Page 12 features ‘Absolute Zines – the movie’ and tells the story of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Scotland and celebrates the role of the late Robin Cook MP, at the time the Member of Parliament for Edinburgh Central.
Page 13
The final page features a QR code – this links to an article in my blog with tells a story about Queer Zines – it is a long and proud history and ‘Queerly Beloved’ is proud to join this heritage during LGBTQ+ History Month in 2026. (The article can be found below)
I used Google as well as the AI tools Perplexity and Claude to investigate the most radical and influential Zines in the Gay rights movement and why are they so important. I tried to find references as far back as possible in the UK (much of the Zines movement was US based).
Early Zines
Image: https://daily.jstor.org/one-the-first-gay-magazine-in-the-united-states/
ONE Magazine from Los Angeles (1953 – 1967) is described as America’s first widely available gay publication and included essays and campaigns such as a demand for same-sex marriage. It survived postal censorship and legal challenges, establishing that pro-gay magazines weren’t automatically “obscene”. These early magazines began the shift towards militancy in the gay community.
Early UK Zines
Image: https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/come-together-gay-liberation-front/
Come Together, produced by London’s Gay Liberation Front from 1970, reported GLF actions, theory, and community life, welcoming marginalised voices. It covered police confrontations and protests, linking personal harassment to social injustice. Alongside other UK publications like Capital Gay, these liberationist zines connected local groups into a movement, prioritising radical change over respectability, language and design closer to punk than polite newsletters.
Radical Zines
Image: Zine Union Catalog https://x.com/zinecat/status/1550148878133071873
Zines were cheap, semi-anonymous, and fairly easy to reproduce. This meant that isolated queer people, with limited resources, could create and consume political culture without mainstream approval. They formed feedback loops: readers copied tactics, reported back, turning print into organising tools. Against mainstream portrayals of queer people as tragic or criminal, DIY publications redefined respectability and centred marginalised stories. Mixing polemic, poetry, cartoons, and organising guides, they refused to separate private desire from public politics and the format prioritised voice over slickness.
In Praise of the Queerly Beloved Zines
Queer zines were vital, but peaceful, weapons in the fight for gay liberation, cheap, fearless, and impossible to silence. They turned isolated readers into collaborators, rewriting politics from the ground up and proving that desire, rage, and community could be printed, passed around, and weaponised. Today, as rights roll back and trans lives face legislative assault, we need that DIY defiance again. Queerly Beloved picks up where Come Together left off: rough-edged, unapologetic, and built for connection over polish. When the mainstream won’t defend us, we print our own manifestos, share our own stories, and organise our own resistance – one photocopied page at a time.
Thank you for reading and interacting with this zine. Hope you enjoyed it, learned something new and will now take some action against the injustice you see in the world.
Sources:
History of LGBT: Newspapers and Magazines https://omnilogos.com/lgbt-newspapers-and-magazines/
How 1950s LGBTQ Found Hope and Community in a … https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/how-1950s-lgbtq-found-hope-and-community-in-a-pioneering-l-a-magazine
Come Together https://womenslibrary.org.uk/2017/02/09/come-together/
Come Together: Gay Liberation Front | Bishopsgate Institute https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/come-together-gay-liberation-front
Come Together: Gay Liberation Front https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/come-together-gay-liberation-front/
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