Park Service Goes Full Stalin, Literally Takes The 'T' Out Of sTonewall
Also, 'LGBTQ+' whittled down to 'LGB.'
In an act of revisionist history Joseph Stalin might admire, the National Park Service disappeared all references to transgender and queer people from its main page for the Stonewall National Monument in New York City yesterday. President Barack Obama signed a proclamation creating the monument in 2016, to mark the site of the June 28, 1969, riot/uprising at the Stonewall Inn, a gay dive bar where the patrons reacted to yet another police raid by fighting back instead of going quietly, sparking the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Thanks to the Internet Archive’s invaluable Wayback Machine, you can see how the page looked a week ago, before the changes. Until yesterday morning, the two-sentence introduction read,
Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGBTQ+ civil rights and provided momentum for a movement.
The first change people noticed was simply the removal of “transgender,” along with the abbreviation being changed to “LGBQ+” — literally trans erasure.
But even as outrage over that change was spreading on social media, more and more parts of the page went away. Within an hour, the page had been altered further, disappearing “queer” and the “Q+” as well, so that now the page is about the LGB rights movement.
What’s more, the page’s top image was switched: Instead of the original photo showing a small crowd enjoying a drag performance in Christopher Park (a city park that’s also part of the monument), with trans-inclusive Pride flags decorating the iron fence, the place was now depopulated, showing only a view of the plaza and its George Segal statue Gay Liberation, placed there in 1979 to mark the 10-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Who knew all those “spot six differences” puzzles would prepare us so well for the second Trump administration?
Fortunately, thanks to all the people who watched climate science and other data vanish during Trump’s first misrule, there are multiple sites that have been saving government webpages with each change in presidential administrations, especially this one. It’s a lot harder to make a memory hole permanent these days.
Reactions to the changes were, to put it mildly, swift and angry, as The New York Times reports (gift link).
“It is outrageous,” said Erik Bottcher, the city councilman who represents the Greenwich Village neighborhood that is home to the monument. “This is the latest attempt to erase the very existence of transgender people.”
He added: “The rebellion at Stonewall would not have happened without trans people. To attempt to erase their existence is utterly shameful.”
In still more clumsy absurdity, the Parks Service site has removed the descriptor “transgender” from descriptions of trans heroes Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, but in a weird nod to their actual expression of gender, kept the pronoun “her” rather than actively misgendering them as he/him. (Here’s the archived original version.)
A Park Service public affairs spokesperson — undoubtedly placed in the job under the new regime — explained the changes were in response to Trump’s executive order to erase trans people from official documents, and let’s never forget its Orwellian title, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
The Stonewall Inn, which is part of the national monument, is also a New York State historic site, and things could get interesting if the feds attempt to alter a state-sponsored plaque at the bar that marks it as the site of “monumental change for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer” Americans.
On Twitter, Gov. Kathy Hochul condemned the changes as “just cruel and petty,” adding that “Transgender people play a critical role in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights — and New York will never allow their contributions to be erased.” Also, Hochul should set up a Bluesky account like all the cool kids.
HOWEVER! This is where we point out again that, online at least, what was deleted can be restored, and that while the Stonewall site has been stripped of real history, we can demand it be made whole again, and tell the truth about Stonewall ourselves. In fact — now don’t tell either of our presidents or their people — quite a few NPS pages about the LGBTQ+ movement remain in place, though no longer linked to the front pages of some sites. These far-right vandals are very clumsy and not very thorough. Keep that on the QT, though.
For instance, if you scroll down the NPS Stonewall page, there are still two links near the bottom that include the full abbreviation (for now); one labeled “LGBTQ Heritage: Education resources,” and a second with the heading “Pride Guide: Explore LGBTQ History and Places.” (Update March 7: Both are gone now, as are the links) The latter link goes only to a “page in progress” placeholder, presumably while all Ts, Qs, nonbinaries, and gender nonconformers are scrubbed from other Park Service resources. Again, per the Wayback Machine, that link was working as recently as February 2.
But! Here’s where we have a little bit of hope: The actual 2016 guidebook to LGBTQ America remains live on the Park Service server. You just have to go right to the URL. (Update March 7: Yep, it’s gone too, now, but lives on at the Wayback) That’s also true of this very queerforward, honest essay on the Stonewall monument, which even before the purge noted that histories of the rising “have sometimes whitewashed this watershed moment for the LGBTQ community” and points to just how truly diverse the heroes of Stonewall were. Same goes for yet another page, a detailed discussion of “Telling All Americans' Stories: LGBTQ Heritage.” (Update March 7: The essay is still there; the latter page is only available by Wayback)
We are in a very dark place. But we can all shine light on the truth, and that’s what we’ll keep doing.
[NYT (gift link) / Library of Congress / Inside Climate News / Stonewall National Monument (live) / Archived Stonewall Monument site]
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By next week, the site will say Stonewall was a peaceful sit-in demonstration of local straight drinkers who were tired of the Mafia running the place. Aided by helpful NYPD cops, they drove out organized crime.
It is all quite intentionally exhausting.