An Executive Order issued by President Trump has caused the National Park Service to remove mention of transgender and queer people from the Stonewall National Monument webpage and other Park Service webpages associated with LGBTQ+ history.
Transgender and queer people led the Stonewall Uprising, which began on June 28, 1969, in response to what was then routine police raids on gay bars. The Stonewall Uprising is a key turning point in the LGBTQ+ rights movement in this country and around the world.
Order 14168 mandates that the federal government and federally funded entities cease any promotion of “gender ideology.” All references to transgender and queer people were removed from the NPS website.
It’s unclear what other actions the Monument’s administrators will take due to a ban in place on communicating with the public. A ground-breaking NPS study of LGBTQ history has also been removed. (There remains an online version at Princeton University Library.)
After the news was reported on February 13th, the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative and The Stonewall Inn issued a joint statement saying:
“This blatant act of erasure not only distorts the truth of our history, but it also dishonors the immense contributions of transgender individuals — especially transgender women of color — who were at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots and the broader fight for LGBTQ+ rights.”
The statement pointed to Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and “countless other trans and gender-nonconforming individuals” who were “central to the resistance we now celebrate as the foundation of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.”
“This is erasing and denying the full and complex story of our country,” The New York Landmarks Conservancy said in their own statement this week.
The Conservancy highlighted those who helped to create the National Monument, work which helped establish the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.
“Revising the historical record to eliminate transgender and queer identities for political purposes is a dangerous and divisive practice,” the Project’s organizers said in a statement posted to their website that includes factual resources telling Stonewall’s full history.
“Our history — once invisible — will not be erased,” they said, “Facts matter. History matters. Transgender and queer people have always existed and will continue to exist. Their histories and contributions are inextricably linked to the American story and must not be erased.”
Stonewall as National Monument
The 7.7-acre Stonewall National Monument is in the West Village neighborhood of Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan. It includes the Stonewall Inn; 8,300-square foot Christopher Park; and nearby streets including Christopher Street, the site of the Stonewall Uprising in 1969.
Stonewall Inn itself, at 51 and 53 Christopher Street, occupies two former mid-19th-century stables.
President Clinton named it the first LGBTQ+ listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
It became a National Historic Landmark in 2000, and both a New York State Historic Site and New York City Landmark in 2015.
President Obama named the site a National Monument in 2016. It’s one of six National Monuments in New York along with Fort Stanwix, the African Burial Ground, Castle Clinton, Governors Island, and the Statue of Liberty.
The Obama Administration also recognized the Henry Gerber House in Chicago as a National Historic Landmark, and designated eight other LGBTQ sites on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Bayard Rustin Residence, Cherry Grove Community House & Theater, Julius’ Bar around the corner from the Stonewall and Carrington House on Fire Island.
The Stonewall National Monument is operated from offices at the Federal Hall National Memorial at 26 Wall Street.
(New York has three National Memorials: Federal Hall, Grant’s Tomb, and Hamilton Grange, the former home of Alexander Hamilton.)
New York State’s own official LGBTQ Monument along the shoreline in Hudson River Park has deliberately preserved trans and queer references and the trans flag still flies outside the Stonewall Inn, which is privately owned.
New York Almanack will continue to tell the complete story of New York State, including its LGBTQ+ people.
Illustrations: The National Park Service webpage result for a LGBTQ history study, February 21, 2025; and Stonewall Inn on July 2nd, the fifth and final day of clashes with the police during the Stonewall Uprising (Larry Morris, for the NY Times).
Thank you for including this topic in New York Almanack, bringing wider attention to the extremes of Trump’s Executive Orders. Some gay men and lesbians identify as queer, some don’t. But there would have been no Stonewall riot without Marsha P. Johnson. To quote, “You never completely have your rights, one person, until you all have your rights. I once held in my hand at a rare book festival a letter by Greta Garbo. I wish I had the money then to buy it. In the letter and in many writings about her, she referred to herself as a boy.
Bravo to New York Almanack and to John Warren for preserving New York State history, and yes, ALL of it. The story of America makes no sense without resistence and the fight for our freedoms, ALL of them, freedom to worship, to assemble, to protest, to vote, and to pursue our quest for life, liberty, and happiness. That began with a struggle agaisnt a colonial power, then to a stuggle for racial equality, not to mention a struggle by immigrants to become part of our nation, and more recently a struggle for rights for gay and trans people. These struggles continue, with the current attempt to erase one or more of the accomplishments acheived by brave and courageous people. These developments turn us back in the wrong direction. Sad, sad, sad!
Thank you and bravo John Warren, for including this kind of reporting in your NY Almanack. The erasure of queer and other important history by the current administration and the complicit republican congress is no different from what Hitler and the nazi party did. It is sickening and shameful.
I agree to the comparison between what is going on under this administration and the early days of Nazi Germany. Some will say it is a stretch, not envisioning that Americans would take it to the extreme of mass killings. But Hitler got his ideas from looking at American history and Trump appears to be taking some of his ideas from Nazi Germany.
DJT, December 16, 2023, N.H. rally. “They’re poisoning the blood of our country” Speaking on those coming “Not just South America …. [but] from Africa, from Asia”
AH, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chapter 11: Nation and Race. “The Germanic inhabitant of the American continent, who has remained racially pure and unmixed, rose to be master of the continent; he will remain the master as long as he does not fall victim to defilement of the blood.”
💯 % behind John Warren and his refusal to accept the disgraceful actions of Trump and his lackeys denying the complex a beautiful reality of our people and humanity!