National
California guv pardons Md. man for 1967 gay sex conviction
Newsom says Pachnowski subjected to ‘stigma, bias, ignorance’
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on July 1 granted a pardon for an 82-year-old bisexual Maryland man for his conviction in Orange County, Calif. in 1967 on a charge of lewd conduct after he was caught having sex with another man in a car parked in a secluded area in Long Beach.
Newsom’s decision to approve a pardon for Henry Pachnowski, who currently lives in Silver Spring, Md., came after Pachnowski, with the help of his lawyer, submitted an application for the pardon last fall in which he explained the circumstances of his arrest more than 54 years ago.
“I engaged with consensual intimacy with a male partner in a deserted industrial area in his car and was caught by a security guard who said we had gone against ‘God and nature,’” Pachnowski stated in his pardon application form sent to the governor’s office.
“He turned us into the police, and I pleaded guilty to a lewdness charge in exchange for the dropping of a ‘sex perversion’ charge,” Pachnowski states in the application. “A pardon would not only recognize and remedy the injustice that I suffered from being targeted and convicted because of my sexuality, it would also ensure that I do not face any future obstacles, such as employment and housing-related ones, stemming from this conviction.”
The pardon granted by Newsom for Pachnowski was one of 17 gubernatorial executive pardons he issued on July 1, according to a statement released by his office. In his official declaration pardoning Pachnowski, Newsom explains the circumstances surrounding Pachnowski’s arrest and conviction and his reason for granting the pardon.
“On August 24, 1967, the Superior Court of California, County of Orange, sentenced Mr. Pachnowski to three years of probation and 10 days in jail for misdemeanor solicit lewd act,” Newsom states.
“Mr. Pachnowski was convicted and sentenced pursuant to a charge commonly used, and used in this case, to punish men for engaging in consensual adult sexual conduct with other men, criminalizing them based on stigma, bias, and ignorance,” he states in the pardon declaration. “With this act of executive clemency, I acknowledge the inherent injustice of the conviction,” Newsom states.
“By the laws of this state it is proper that I, as Governor of the State of California, give testimony that Mr. Pachnowski merits this pardon,” Newsom wrote in his declaration, adding that under California’s constitution and statutes he grants to Henry Pachnowski “a full and unconditional pardon for the above case.”
Pachnowski, who along with his parents, is a Nazi Holocaust survivor, said he applied for the pardon at the advice of his attorney, who had been helping him renew his permanent U.S. residence status after decades of uncertainty as a “stateless” person.
He told the Blade in an interview on Wednesday that he was born in Germany in 1940 after his parents, who are from Poland, were taken against their will to Germany following the Nazi takeover of Poland, where they were placed in a forced labor camp. After surviving the dangers in Nazi Germany during World War II, Pachnowski said he and his family remained in Germany until 1951 when they immigrated to the U.S.
But because he couldn’t claim citizenship legally from Poland or Germany, his decades of living in the U.S. have been marked with uncertainty, he said, from an immigration standpoint.
Jayesh Rathod, a professor with the Immigrant Justice Clinic at American University’s Washington College of Law, has been serving as Pachnowski’s attorney. Rathod told the Blade that after several years of interactions with U.S. immigration officials, Pachnowski was in the final stages of having his permanent U.S. residence status renewed and should be receiving his long sought Green Card.
Although a misdemeanor arrest like the one Pachnowski faced back in 1967 would not likely prompt immigration officials to deny his request for permanent residency, Rathod said he and others working on Pachnowski’s immigration case thought it would be best to seek a pardon for the conviction.
“We just wanted to get it off the record, both because of the immigration reason but also because we felt morally and legally it was an improper and unjust prosecution,” Rathod said.
“And I think it’s just great that the governor did this,” said Rathod. “It’s so important to kind of correct all these wrongs against the LGBTQ community,” he said. “Although it’s a relatively minor conviction, obviously it’s really significant for him and it’s important for the community.”
South Carolina
Man faces first S.C. ‘hate intimidation’ charge
Timothy Truett allegedly shot at gay club in Myrtle Beach on April 1
A South Carolina man remains in custody on a more than $300,000 bond after he allegedly opened fire at a Myrtle Beach nightclub on April 1, according to WMBF.
Reports say 37-year-old Timothy James Truett Jr., of Clover, S.C., was detained by the Myrtle Beach Police Department after the April 1 incident outside Pulse Ultra Club. He was later arrested and charged with possession of a weapon during a violent crime, discharging a firearm into a dwelling, discharging a firearm within city limits, malicious injury to real property valued over $5,000, and assault or intimidation due to political opinions or the exercise of civil rights.
At 10:57 a.m. on April 1, officers responded to a call about a possible shooting at Pulse Ultra Club, located in the 2700 block of South Kings Highway.
In an affidavit released later, the club’s owner, Ken Phillips, said he was doing paperwork that morning when he heard “five or six” gunshots. He went outside and found a window and the windshield of his SUV shattered by bullets. An SUV with blue plastic covering one window was left at the scene.
Police later reviewed footage that showed a silver vehicle stopping in the middle of the road. The video appeared to capture muzzle flashes coming from the passenger-side window.
According to the affidavit, an officer later pulled over a vehicle driven by Truett and found spent shell casings in the back seat, along with a gun.
Documents do not detail why Truett was ultimately charged under the state law covering assault or intimidation tied to political opinions or the exercise of civil rights.
As of April 1, records show Truett is being held in Horry County on a combined bond of more than $312,000.
WMBF spoke with Phillips after the incident and asked whether there was any prior conflict that might have led to the shooting.
“I don’t know if it’s personal, I don’t know if it’s related to being gay, I don’t know if it’s related to the bar issues,” Phillips told WMBF. “Anybody with a mindset of pulling out a weapon in broad daylight is not right.”
“My primary concern has and always will be the safety of my community and my customers,” he added. “It’s given me great concern … as to how far people will go.”
WMBF also spoke with Adam Hayes, vice chair of Myrtle Beach’s Human Rights Coalition, who was involved in pushing for the ordinance. He said that while the incident itself is troubling, it shows the policy is being put to use.
The ordinance is intended to deter “crimes that are motivated by bias or hate towards any person or persons, in whole or in part, because of the actual or perceived” identity, in the absence of a statewide hate crime law.
“It’s nice to see that something we put into policy is not just a piece of paper, that it’s actually being used,” said Hayes.
He said the shooting underscores the need for a statewide hate crime law in South Carolina and added that the incident has left the local LGBTQ community shaken.
South Carolina and Wyoming are the only two states in the U.S. without a comprehensive statewide hate crime law.
Truett remains in jail as of publication.
The White House
Trump budget would codify expanded global gag rule
Funding for LGBTQ health programs around the world would also be cut
The Trump-Vance administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget would codify the expanded global gag rule and eliminate funding for LGBTQ-specific programs in global health initiatives.
“The budget would ensure no funding supports abortion, unfettered access to birth control, and also eliminates funding for circumcision and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer services to better focus funds on life-saving assistance,” reads the proposed budget the White House released on April 3. “The United States should not pay for the world’s birth control and therapy.”
The proposed budget includes four examples of “eliminated activities.”
- In the last administration, PEPFAR funded health workers who performed over 21 abortions in Mozambique
- Promoting reproductive health education and access to birth control and other harmful programs couched under ‘family planning’ in Ghana
- A supply chain “control tower” to provide a “holistic commercial of the shelf solution” on the Office of Population and Reproductive Health (PRH)
- Promoting health equity and providing condoms and contraception in Kenya.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The Biden-Harris administration shortly after it took office in January 2021 rescinded it.
The Trump-Vance White House earlier this year expanded the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.” The expansion took effect on Feb. 26.
US funding cuts have devastated global LGBTQ rights movement
The Trump-Vance administration after it took office in January 2025 moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded LGBTQ and intersex rights groups around the world. USAID officially shut down on July 1, 2025.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March 2025 announced the State Department would administer the 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled. Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the U.S. foreign aid freeze the White House announced shortly after it took office.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding because of these cuts. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down.
The Trump-Vance administration has signed healthcare-specific agreements with Kenya, Uganda, and other African countries through its American First Global Health Strategy. Advocacy groups with whom the Blade has spoken have expressed concern these partnerships will result in further exclusion and government-sanctioned discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The proposed fiscal year 2027 budget includes $5.1 billion for “global health to end the previous administration’s abuse of these programs and to execute (the State Department’s) newly released America First Global Health Strategy.” This figure represents a $4.3 billion cut from the previous year.
“The president’s new vision of bilateral health assistance eliminates bloated Beltway Bandit contracts, does more with fewer dollars, and transitions recipient countries to self-reliance,” reads the proposed budget. “The budget would also eliminate disease-specific accounts and provide the department crucial agility to address the actual needs of each recipient country — across HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and polio — to strengthen global health security and protect Americans from disease.”
“The budget would focus on new compacts that unify funding, achieving economies of scale in both implementation and oversight,” it adds. “Under the prior administration, only about 40 percent of PEPFAR funds supported actual service delivery, including medications, testing, commodities, and health workers, with the remaining 60 percent wasted on duplicative administrative costs, unwieldy supply chains, and layers of endless bureaucracy. The new AFGHS (America First Global Health Strategy) compacts would improve efficiency, cut red tape, and dismantle the bloated ecosystem of foreign assistance profiteers.”
The Council for Global Equality on April 3 reiterated its criticism of the expanded global gag rule, and urged Congress to reject the proposed budget.
“We won’t mince words: people are dying because of this policy,” said the Council for Global Equality in a statement. “Making this policy permanent will only ensure that U.S. foreign assistance discriminates against those who need services the most, all while forcing people around the world to adhere to the Trump administration’s extremist, ideological agenda that denies the very existence of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex persons.”
“We will not be silent as Trump threatens to upend decades of bipartisan foreign assistance programs to appease his extremist base,” added the group. “We call on Congress to immediately reject this budget and block implementation of the expanded global gag rules.”
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, will visit Hungary next week.
An announcement the White House released on Thursday said the Vances will be in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, from April 7-8.
JD Vance “will hold bilateral meetings with” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The announcement further indicates the vice president “will also deliver remarks on the rich partnership between the United States and Hungary.”
The Vances will travel to Hungary less than a week before the country’s parliamentary elections take place on April 12.
Orbán, who has been in office since 2010, and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition government have faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown.
The Associated Press notes polls indicate Orbán is trailing Péter Magyar and his center-right Tisza party.
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