Richard L. Schlegel

Richard Lamar Schlegel (February 11, 1927 – February 25, 2006) was an American LGBT rights activist and civil servant from Pennsylvania. Fired from federal and state government jobs on account of his sexual orientation, he filed a wrongful termination suit that reached the United States Supreme Court in 1970. Schlegel v. United States is considered an early landmark case in the American gay rights movement.

Early life and education Schlegel was born in Berrysburg, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1927. He was the only child of Roy Fredrick Schlegel, a construction worker, and Margaret Annetta (Deibler) Schlegel, a schoolteacher and homemaker, both of Pennsylvania German descent.

Schlegel graduated from Milroy High School in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, and attended Pennsylvania State University from 1943 to 1945. He dropped out after being outed by a fraternity brother and was promptly drafted into the United States Army Air Forces, where he served two years on bases in Texas and Florida, performing office duties for the Office of the Judge Advocate General. He returned to Penn State under the G.I. Bill in 1947 and graduated in February 1949 with a bachelor's degree.

During the 1960s, Schlegel became an active member of the Janus Society, an early homophile association based in Philadelphia, and founded a Janus Society chapter in Harrisburg. Barred from government jobs, he became active in gay magazine publishing, working as a proofreader, writer, and editor for Guild Press and Potomac News (both owned by H. Lynn Womack), Drum (edited by Clark Polak), and Trojan Book Service from 1967 to 1969. In 1970, he was editor and publisher of PACE!, a short-lived magazine published by the Philadelphia Action Committee for Equality. He endowed a scholarship at Bucknell University in 1999, Schlegel's correspondence and other papers are held in the library archives of Cornell University, the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California, and other institutions.

In October 2021, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission installed a roadside state historical marker outside Schlegel's row house at 205 State Street in Harrisburg. The marker was one of two sponsored by the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania, and the first to address LGBT history in central Pennsylvania. Soon after the marker was installed, state senator John DiSanto called for the marker's removal, pointing to a 1993 oral history interview with Schlegel available on OutHistory.org, in which Schlegel recalled engaging in sexual activity as a 16-year-old with a younger boy aged 11 or 12. DiSanto accused Schlegel of grooming. The PHMC board voted unanimously to remove the marker, which was taken down on June 3, 2022.