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The changes come after an executive order President Trump signed calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female.
A National Park Service sign marks the Stonewall National Monument outside the Stonewall Inn, Monday, June 17, 2024, in New York. AP Photo/Pamela Smith
By SUSAN HAIGH, Associated Press
February 14, 2025 | 8:19 AM
3 minutes to read
References to transgender people were removed Thursday from a National Park Service website for the Stonewall National Monument, a park and visitor center in New York that commemorates a 1969 riot that became a pivotal moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
The changes were made in the wake of an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female.
“This is just cruel and petty,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, posted on X. “Transgender people play a critical role in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights — and New York will never allow their contributions to be erased.”
The monument in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village section is based in a tiny park across the street from the Stonewall Inn, a bar that became ground zero for the gay rights movement on June 28, 1969, when gay and transgender patrons and neighborhood residents fought back against a police raid.
The park service website on Friday was still filled with information about the uprising, including photographs of noted transgender activists.
But the words “transgender” and “queer” had been deleted from text that had been on the site.
Also, the letters T and Q were cut from various references to the acronym LGBTQ and replaced with phrases like the “LGB rights movement” or “LGB civil rights.”
Representatives of the present-day Stonewall Inn, which is part of the national monument, and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, a nonprofit organization associated with the historic bar, expressed anger and outrage over the changes.
“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,” said organizers of the two entities in a statement.
“They’re trying to literally cis-wash, if you will, LGBTQ history by taking trans folks and saying they didn’t exist then and don’t exist now,” said Stacy Lentz, CEO of The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative and a co-owner of The Stonewall Inn. “It is very alarming.”
Angelica Christina, who is board director of the initiative and a transgender woman, said the changes to the website are not surprising given “the constant executive orders the Trump administration has been leveling against the trans community.”
But she said it is shocking and unnerving to see the Stonewall National Monument in particular targeted: “The West Village,