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“Let us be clear: Stonewall is transgender history,” the Stonewall Inn said in a response.
The National Park Service recently erased references to queer and transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument website, sparking outrage among transgender activists.
The monument commemorates the historic New York City gay bar where LGBTQ activists — including transgender trailblazers Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera — waged an uprising that was a turning point for the modern LGBTQ rights movement.
“The National Park Service has REMOVED mentions of transgender people being involved with Stonewall. Not only did the[y] remove the [word]‘Transgender’ but changed ‘LGBTQ+’ to ‘LGBQ+’. The federal government is attempting to erase us and take away our history,” transgender legislative researcher and activist Allison Chapman said on Bluesky. “This pride, we riot.” The Park service also later removed the word “queer” and the “Q+” from the web page.
The New York Times reported that the Park Service’s public affairs department said the website changes were made to comply with Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, aimed at “restoring biological truth to the federal government.” The department also referenced a second order issued last month by the acting Secretary of the Interior.
The erasure of trans history aligns with Trump’s anti-trans executive order, which requires the federal government to recognize only male and female as legal genders. Following this directive, agencies like the State Department, Centers for Disease Control, and Department of Veterans Affairs have reduced “LGBTQ+” to “LGB,” eliminated references to transgender, queer, and intersex people, and removed related web pages and datasets. In fact, according to the Center for American Progress, the Trump administration has taken down over 350 government web pages containing LGBTQ policies, information and resources.
“The Stonewall Inn and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative are outraged and appalled by the recent removal of the word ‘transgender’ from the Stonewall National Monument page on the National Park Service website,” the Stonewall Inn said in a statement. “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.”
Trans activists say that by stripping references to transgender and queer people from the Stonewall National Monument website, the Park Service is erasing a crucial part of the history it is meant to preserve.
“Trans women were some of the most influential activists behind the Stonewall movement and what followed. 3 articles of clothing laws were why raids happened,” transgender journalist and activist Erin Reed said on Bluesky.
The 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn was, in part, a response to police enforcement of gendered dress codes. Although no law explicitly required Americans to wear at least three articles of clothing matching their assigned sex, queer historian Hugh Ryan notes that police frequently used various statutes — informally known in queer circles as the “three-article rule” — to criminalize and arrest people who defied gender norms. Transgender and gender-nonconforming people were frequent targets of these raids.
On June 28, 1969 some of the most relentlessly policed — transgender women, drag queens, and homeless LGBTQ youth — fought back, sparking a movement that became a defining moment in the fight for LGBTQ rights.
“Trans people threw the first brick at Stonewall,” LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, Ari Drennen, said on X. “Now, the Trump administration is trying to write us out of that history. We will not let them.”
Transgender activists emphasized how the Trump administration even went so far as to remove mentions of Sylvia Rivera’s advocacy for trans rights from the Stonewall National Monument website. The page now reads: “At a young age Sylvia began fighting for gay and rights.” Rivera was a drag queen, gay liberationist, and transgender rights activist who resisted arrest that night and later organized LGBTQ protests in response to the raid.
“Let us be clear: Stonewall is transgender history,” the Stonewall Inn said. “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.”
In response to this anti-trans revisionism, over 1,000 protesters in New York City said “hell no!” to the erasure of transgender contributions to history. The protesters gathered on Friday at Christopher Park, which is across the street from the Stonewall Inn, and yelled “Stand up fight back!” and “No LGB without the T!”
