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When Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell, John Timmons, and Randy Wicker announced that they were homosexuals and asked to be served a drink, the bartender at Julius’ refused their request. The sip-in was part of a larger campaign by more radical members of the Mattachine Society to clarify laws and rules that inhibited the running of gay bars as legitimate, non-mob, establishments and to stop the harassment of gay bar patrons. This was particularly important because bars were one of the few places where gay people could meet each other.
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The State Liquor Authority regulations were one of the primary governmental mechanisms of oppression against the gay community because it precluded their right of free assembly.
On April 21, 1966, three members of the Mattachine Society, an early and influential gay rights organization, organized what became known as a “sip-in.” Their intent was to challenge New York State Liquor Authority regulations that were promulgated so that bars could not serve drinks to known or suspected gay men or lesbians, since their presence was considered de facto disorderly. Julius’, now the oldest gay bar in New York City (and also one of the oldest bars in the city in continuous operation), is a bar and restaurant that dates back to the nineteenth century, with its current design probably dating from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.īy the 1960s, some four decades after Greenwich Village had become the center of New York City’s LGBT community, the bar was attracting a significant number of gay men, although it was not exclusively a gay bar.
Julius’ Bar in Greenwich Village is significant in the area of social history for its association with an important early event in the modern gay rights movement.