Seventy-two Democratic lawmakers have demanded the restoration of references to transgender and queer Americans removed from Stonewall National Monument in a letter to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and acting National Park Service director Jessica Bowron.
Stonewall National Monument, located in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, was the first unit of the National Park System dedicated to LGBTQIA+ Equality. It honors the legacy of the Stonewall Rebellion, when members of the LGBTQIA+ fought back to demand their rights at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969.
“This erasure of transgender and queer Americans from the history of Stonewall—or from any part of our national narrative—is a blatant attack on the integrity of public history,” wrote the lawmakers. “The history of Stonewall cannot be told without the stories of transgender Americans.”
The letter references a June 9th memo, published by NPS, that requires all NPS units to post signage encouraging the public to offer feedback on any information that they feel portrays American history and landscapes in a negative light. The memo was a response to President Trump’s executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which ordered the removal of any signage or interpretive information that “contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
Earlier this year, the National Park Service removed the "T," as well as the "Q," from LGBTQ in the first sentence on the monument's webpage. The Park Service also erased "transgender" from most of the site, though there remained mention of the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center."
After more than 100 queer and transgender stories were removed from NPS webpages, Resistance Rangers, a group pushing back against the Trump administration's efforts to erase history, stepped in to preserve the stories. The site, Rangers Uncensored, compiles edited and deleted NPS webpages, which are available through the Internet Archive.
“Erasing trans, queer, and gender-expansive people from the stories told at NPS sites silences and obscures folks who have long been here and queer, actively enriching our nation’s history,” said Alyssa Samek, an associate professor of Rhetorical Studies at Cal State Fullerton.
The letter from lawmakers also expresses concern over reports of diminished references to Japanese American internment, Native American massacres, and the enslavement of African Americans. Signs discussing climate change have also been targeted.
“Units of the National Park System play a vital role in preserving and interpreting our nation’s history, including its most difficult chapters,” wrote the lawmakers. “Efforts to reshape historical interpretation to conform to political or ideological preferences risk undermining public trust and the credibility of the Park Service.”
The letter calls for the immediate restoration of all public-facing materials at Stonewall, as well as a briefing to discuss the ways history is being rewritten at NPS units, including how the Park Service plans to use visitor feedback to alter or remove content across the National Park System.
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