Reported today on The New York Times For the full article visit:
He was a Civil Rights Leader Shunned Because He Was Gay. That Might Change.California legislators say Bayard Rustin should be cleared of a conviction under laws that targeted gay people.Image(Don't get California Today by email? Here's the sign-up.)He worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. for decades as a planner of the Montgomery bus boycott and as the primary architect of the March on Washington in 1963.He was a confidant and an adviser, a mentor who introduced Dr. King to Gandhi's principles of nonviolent resistance.But Bayard Rustin's role in the civil rights movement was largely relegated to the background. In public, Dr. King and other leaders distanced themselves.That was because Mr. Rustin, who died in 1987 at age 75, was gay.And on Jan. 21, 1953, he was in Pasadena for a speaking engagement when he was arrested after he was found having sex in a parked car. He was cited for vagrancy and spent 50 days in Los Angeles County jail. He was registered as a sex offender.The incident hardly defined his long career. But it's been a mark on his legacy and was used in efforts to discredit him.Today, though, Scott Wiener, the state senator who is chair of the California Legislative L.G.B.T.Q. Caucus, and Shirley Weber, the Assembly member who leads the California Legislative Black Caucus, are set to send a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom asking for a posthumous pardon.[Read The Times's obituary for Mr. Rustin.]"The criminalization of the L.G.B.T.Q. community has never been about preventing harm to anyone, but rather to eradicate and erase L.G.B.T.Q. people from the face of the planet," they wrote. "Mr. Rustin's arrest and prosecution was purely about this tragic history."Mr. Wiener told me the idea of pardoning Mr. Rustin occurred to him after a conversation with the longti
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