American activist Richard (Dick) Leitsch was BOTD in 1935. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he identified as gay from an early age, having his first sexual experiences with boys while attending a Catholic prep school. After studying briefly at Bellarmine University, he moved to New York in 1959. He formed a relationship with Craig Rodwell, through whom he joined gay rights organisation the Mattachine Society, becoming president of the New York chapter in 1965. Inspired by sit-ins of racially segregated restaurants during the Black Civil Rights movement, Leitsch staged a series of “sip-ins” in 1966, targeting Julius’ bar in Greenwich Village and other venues that refused to serve gay customers, attracting extensive media attention. The Mattachines later sued the State Liquor Authority to overturn an unwritten policy prohibited bars from knowingly serving gay customers on grounds that they were inherently “disorderly.” Thought to be the first organised act of civil disobedience in the pre-Stonewall gay rights movement, the sip-ins helped legitimise gay bars as social spaces for LGBTQ people. In 1966, he lobbied New York politicians to halt police entrapment of gay men, working with bar owners, the American Civil Liberties Union, police and city officials to gradually overcome the practice, while advising gay men how to navigate arrests and present themselves in court. In 1969, Leitsch was the first gay journalist to report on the riots at the Stonewall Inn, published in the Advocate. A regular contributor to Gay magazine, he published an interview with the then-unknown singer Bette Midler in 1970. As an openly gay man, he found it difficult to find and maintain employment, working variously as a journalist, bartender and home decorator. Post-Stonewall, Mr. Leitsch was criticised by the emerging Gay Liberation Front as being insufficiently militant, and retired from activism, quietly volunteering for LGBTQ charities. His reputation was rehabilitated in the 2000s by gay historians George Chauncey and David Carter, who cited him as a pivotal figure in the gay liberation movement. In 2016, he was honoured at a 50th anniversary celebration of the Julius’ sit-in, and publicly commended by President Barack Obama for his contribution to LGBTQ equality. Leitsch was in a 17-year relationship with Timothy Schofield until Schofield’s death from an AIDS-related illness in 1989. He died in 2018 aged 83.