California pardoned a gay civil rights leader. Activists want clemency for more LGBTQ+ prisoners

The California governor has launched an initiative to grant clemency to people historically prosecuted for being gay, starting with a posthumous pardon for Bayard Rustin, a celebrated gay civil rights leader.

Rustin, who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr and helped organize the March on Washington, was arrested in 1953 for having consensual sex, convicted under a “vagrancy” law long used to prosecute LGBTQ+ people.

Governor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that his office would pardon Rustin, who died in 1987, and also allow others subjected to this kind of discriminatory policing to apply for clemency. Rustin, who also helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott and who was given a posthumous presidential medal of freedom by Barack Obama, was sentenced to 60 days in jail and forced to register as a sex offender after his arrest.