LGBTQ+ Activists to Protest at Stonewall National Monument Over Erasure of Trans and Queer History
by Staff Reporters
Outraged LGBTQ+ activists and community members are set to gather at Christopher Park in the West Village on February 14, 2025, at 12 noon for a Valentine’s Day protest against the Trump administration’s recent removal of transgender and queer references from the Stonewall National Monument website.
The National Park Service quietly altered the monument’s website, changing the acronym from LGBTQ+ to LGB and erasing references to transgender and queer individuals from its historical narrative. The removed content previously acknowledged the Stonewall Uprising as a defining moment for LGBTQ+ civil rights, specifically mentioning transgender individuals’ role in the movement.
The protest, organized by staff from the historic Stonewall Inn, aims to challenge this revisionism. The protest announcement reads:
“NO LGB WITHOUT THE T
The Trump Administration has erased trans people from the Stonewall National Monument website… we will not allow Trump and his hatemongers to redefine our communities or our history!”
The Stonewall National Monument, designated by President Barack Obama in 2016, is the first U.S. national monument honoring LGBTQ+ history. The Stonewall Inn itself was the site of the 1969 riots that launched the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, led by transgender women of color such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
In a statement, The Stonewall Inn and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative condemned the administration’s decision, calling it a “blatant act of erasure” and a “direct attack on transgender people, especially transgender women of color, who continue to face violence, discrimination, and erasure at every turn.”
Activists demand the immediate restoration of transgender and queer history to the National Park Service website and are calling on allies to join them in protest.
For more information, visit https://www.nps.gov/ston/index.htm.
