California is to posthumously
pardon LGBT+ and civil rights hero Bayard Rustin for his 1953 ‘vagrancy’
arrest, which was for consensual gay sex.
Rustin, a close confidante of
Martin Luther King Jr, was one of the key organizers of the historic 1963 March
on Washington – a highpoint of the civil rights movement.
He also played a vital role in
non-violent protests and boycotts to end racial discrimination in the United
States.
While Rustin kept in the
background at the time, President Barack Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in
2013.
Bayard
Rustin’s ‘vagrancy’ arrest
But in 1953, police arrested
Rustin in Pasadena, California. They discovered him having sex with two men in
a parked car. The arrest came just hours after he gave a speech about
anti-colonial struggles in West Africa.
They charged him with vagrancy
– a common charge for consensual gay sex. And he spent 50 days in an LA
jail.
The conviction haunted him
until his death in 1987.
However, despite that, Rustin
didn’t hide his sexuality.
Davis Platt, Rustin’s partner
from the 1940s, said: ‘I never had any sense at all that Bayard felt any shame
or guilt about his homosexuality. That was rare in those days. Rare.’
And while he didn’t campaign on
LGBT+ rights for many years, he did join the fight towards the end of his life.
In 1986 he gave a speech
supporting New York State’s Gay Rights Bill, titled ‘The New N*****s are Gays’.
He said: ‘Today, blacks are no
longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every
segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial
discrimination.
‘The question of social change
should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.’
Posthumous
pardon for Rustin
California Governor Gavin
Newsom said he was not just pardoning Rustin. He also wants to clear the record
of others who had consensual gay sex.
Newsome said: ‘In California
and across the country, many laws have been used as legal tools of oppression,
and to stigmatize and punish LGBTQ poeple and communities and warn others what
harm could await them for living authentically.
‘I thank those who advocated
for Bayard Rustin’s pardon, and I want to encourage others in similar
situations to seek a pardon to right this egregious wrong.’
SOURCE: GAY STAR NEWS
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