Dick Leitsch, gay activist who led ‘sip-in,’ dies at 83

Dick Leitsch – the pioneering gay activist who led a 1966 ‘sip-in’ at a New York City bar has died at the age of 83. Leitsch died Friday

A pioneering gay activist who led a 1966 ‘sip-in’ at a New York City bar has died at the age of 83.

Dick Leitsch died Friday at a hospice in Manhattan. His death from liver cancer was confirmed by his brother, John Leitsch, of Louisville, Kentucky.

Leitsch was a leader of the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights group.

His ‘sip-in’ protest was meant to echo lunch counter sit-ins.

On April 21, 1966, Leitsch and three friends – Craig Rodwell, John Timmons and Randy Wicker, along with a Times reporter and Village Voice photographer Fred W. McDarrah — staged the ‘sip-in’ at Julius’, a bar in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan. 

 Leitsch and three friends sat down at a bar and announced, ‘We are homosexuals.’

The bartender clapped his hand over Leitsch’s glass and refused to serve them. 

The moment was captured by McDarrah and the Times published a story the next day, titled ‘3 Deviates Invite Exclusion By Bars.’

The protest led the state liquor authority to end its practice of using patronage by gay people as an excuse to revoke liquor licenses.

The Mattachine Society, a gay group that counted Leitsch among its leaders, threatened to sue the New York State Liquor Authority to overturn the policy that prohibited bars from knowingly serving alcoholic drinks to gays, the Times reported.

The lawsuit was never filed. Leitsch, in an interview with the Times in March, said ‘The whole thing was bizarre.’

‘We didn’t need to prove that the bars refused to serve us, or that the liquor authority revoked licenses for serving gays,’ Leitsch told the newspaper. ‘They denied ever doing it.’

The publicity led to a Mattachine lawsuit in New Jersey, the Washington Post reported.

In 1967, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that ‘well-behaved homosexuals’ could not be barred from a drink.

‘In our culture, homosexuals are indeed unfortunates,’ the New Jersey ruling said. But ‘their status does not make them criminals or outlaws.’

Richard Joseph Leitsch was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on May 11, 1935. Survivors include a brother and sister. 

His partner of 17 years, Timothy Scoffield, was diagnosed with AIDS and died in 1989. 

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