Gov. Gavin Newsom posthumously pardons civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, who was arrested on a 'morals charge' in Pasadena in 1953.
In an effort to rectify decades of prosecutions targeting LGBTQ Californians, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced a new clemency initiative to pardon people prosecuted under discriminatory laws.
Rustin was arrested in Pasadena on a “morals charge” in 1953 for having sex in a parked car with another man and spent nearly two months in jail. On Wednesday, Newsom announced he granted Rustin, who died in 1987, a posthumous pardon. Under the clemency initiative, LGBTQ Californians convicted for vagrancy, loitering, sodomy or other laws used to prosecute people for having consensual adult sex will be eligible to apply for pardons. The Board of Parole Hearings investigates pardon applications and makes recommendations to the governor, who has sole constitutional authority to grant them.
Sen. Scott Weiner , chairman of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, praised Newsom’s decision to pardon Rustin and undo the damage inflicted for decades by discriminatory prosecutions.“Generations of LGBT people — including countless gay men — were branded criminals and sex offenders simply because they had consensual sex,” Weiner said in a statement released by the governor’s office. “This was often life-ruining, and many languished on the sex offender registry for decades.
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