Trump Administration Scrubs Transgender, Queer People From Stonewall Monument Website

They were on the front lines of the most famous uprising for LGBTQ+ civil rights in history, but the Trump administration has erased mention of transgender and queer people from the official website of the national monument marking the event.

The National Park Services' (NPS) website for Stonewall National Monument in New York City now welcomes visitors with the lines: "Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights and provided momentum for a movement."

Previously, the site said "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person."

This, despite the fact that queer and transgender people including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera—who, according to a still-standing NPS web page, threw the second Molotov cocktail at police—were front-and-center during the six-day uprising at the Stonewall Inn gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village.

In a statement posted on Instagram, the Stonewall Inn and its Stonewall Gives Back Initiative said they are "outraged and appalled" by the NPS move, adding that "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 continues:

Let us be clear: Stonewall history is transgender history. Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and countless other trans and gender-nonconforming individuals fought bravely, and often at great personal risk, to push back against oppressive systems. Their courage, sacrifice, and leadership were central to the resistance we now celebrate as the foundation of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The decision to erase the word "transgender" is a deliberate attempt to erase our history and marginalize the very people who paved the way for many victories we have achieved as a community. It is a direct attack on transgender people, especially transgender women of color, who continue to face violence, discrimination, and erasure at every turn.

Also gone from the NPS site is a page previously containing an interactive " Pride Guide" for visitors "to explore the legacy and history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people and places."

Stonewall National Monument—which was dedicated by then-President Barack Obama in 2016—commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Uprising at and around the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village.

Police raids of LGBTQ+ spaces were a frequent fact of life during a time when consensual same-sex sexual relations, cross-dressing, and even dancing with members of the same sex were illegal. On the night of June 28, 1969 New York City police raided the mafia-owned Stonewall Inn, ostensibly to investigate illegal alcohol sales and find "three-article rule" violators to arrest, provoking the six-day uprising that is widely credited with sparking the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

This is the New York Daily News' front-page coverage of the Stonewall Uprising.
(Photo: New York Daily News)

Although there were earlier uprisings—like the 1966 trans-led Compton's Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco—Stonewall became synonymous with the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ equality.

While attempts to marginalize and separate the fight for transgender rights from the wider LGBTQ+ movement are nothing new—Rivera lamented this "gay liberation but transgender nothing" ethos a generation ago—such efforts have accelerated in recent years, fueled by the far-right and prominent figures in the "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" (TERF) movement, author J.K. Rowling, anti-trans gay activists, and others.

The NPS' move is part of Trump's wider war on transgender people that began during his first administration and continues today with the president's executive orders aimed at delegitimizing transgender identity, cutting off federal support for gender-affirming healthcare, pushing for a ban on trans women and girls from female sports, renewing his first-term prohibition on trans military enlistment, and other insidiously discriminatory and dangerous moves.

Transgender activists and their allies aren't taking the Trump's administration's latest move sitting down. A protest took place at the monument site on Friday afternoon, with others vowing future action.

"The Trump administration is trying to write us out of that history," Media Matters LGBTQ program director Ari Drennen asserted on social media. "We will not let them."

Lamenting that "the federal government is attempting to erase us and take away our history," researcher and self-described "transgender menace" Allison Chapman said on the social platform Bluesky, "This Pride, we riot."