Trans People Protest Stonewall National Monument Censorship

Hundreds of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers and their allies gathered outside the Stonewall Inn on Friday to manifest physically what the Trump administration has sought to erase in government records: that transgender and queer people have demonstrated, protested, and occasionally fought in the streets throughout American history for their civil and human rights.

On Thursday night, the National Parks Service, acting on orders from the White House, erased any mention of “transgender” and “queer” people from the official website for the Stonewall National Monument.

It was a brazen act of historical revisionism from the administration. On June 28, 1969, transgender and queer New Yorkers fought back against discriminatory police raids in what are now known as the Stonewall Riots, galvanizing the modern LGBTQ+ liberation movement and marking a historic response to repressive state violence and societal marginalization. Among other things, the riots — which are sometimes referred to as an uprising or rebellion — are considered a precursor to modern-day Pride parades across the world.

Then-President Barack Obama officially designated the Stonewall Inn and surrounding areas as the “Stonewall National Monument” in 2016. But now, instead of the federal government marking the rebellion as “a milestone in the quest for LGBTQ+ civil rights,” the government website for the Stonewall National Monument acknowledges only the “LGB.”

On Friday, transgender and queer New Yorkers and their allies said the change — part of a wave of policies from the new administration targeting transgender people — would not stand.

“Trans people have been here since the beginning of time,” said Tanya Asapansa-Johnson Walker, a prominent trans activist who spoke at the protest. “We fought in all the wars. We’re creators. We have families and children. We’re just as much a part of this world as anyone else. We’re here to stay, and we will not be erased by a Christo-fascist, neo-Nazi administration.”

Walker said she had a panic attack upon realizing the government’s website for Stonewall had been purged of queer and transgender people, given the role activists like Marsha P. Johnson played in shaping the modern understanding of LGBTQ+ rights. She also noted she was a US Army veteran — “I didn’t say I had bone spurs” — and argued President Donald Trump’s effort to exclude transgender people from military service was unconstitutional.

“And they have the nerve to have crosses around their neck,” Walker said. “Jesus Christ did not hate queer people or trans people.”

Listening to the speeches from just outside the gates of Christopher Park, across from the Stonewall Inn, Katherine Rose Turbes, who is nonbinary, told HuffPost the cuts to Stonewall’s government website were “appalling.”

“We won’t stand for the erasure of the people who fought for us to have rights as we’re living today,” they said. “The government might say, ‘this is what Stonewall was,’ [but] we’re saying, ‘no, we know what Stonewall was. And we’re here to protect that history.’”

Others at Friday’s protest pointed out Trump’s targeting of out-groups — trans people, immigrants, activists — as a diversionary tactic to distract from unpopular aspects of their agenda.

“They’re trying to use trans people as scapegoats to cover for cutting all these social services — so they can give the money to the billionaires,” said Renée Imperato, a longtime leader in New York’s trans community, who held court in Christopher Park after the protest wound down. (House Republicans Wednesday released a budget plan with massive tax cuts for the rich alongside deep cuts to social services that benefit the poor and working class people.)

“Fascists” like Trump and Elon Musk “have stayed in power by two things: divide and conquer,” Imperato added. “And they’ve been doing that since the history of this country, whether it’s Black from white, Latinx from Asian, Indigenous people — that’s how they stay in power. And if they could not do it, they would be in the trash bin of history.”

“These capitalist parasites never, ever have enough. And now they want our blood.”

The purge of the Stonewall National Monument website was just the latest attack against trans people from the Trump administration, which has also attempted to eliminate access to gender-affirming care for transgender people 19 and younger (a move that’s been paused by two federal judges); deny trans people the right to correct their passports; bar trans athletes from women’s sports; investigate schools that promote “gender ideology”; erase data on trans people from government websites; and transfer transgender federal prisoners to facilities that match their sex assigned at -birth. (That latter move has also been paused by a judge.)

Friday’s demonstration — which followed a growing wave of protests across the country for LGBTQ+ rights — was a show of organizational capacity. The change to Stonewall’s government website happened Thursday night, and groups like ACT UP quickly sent out calls for a 12 p.m. protest the following day. Despite temperatures hovering around freezing, the crowd was energetic and stayed for over an hour as several speakers railed against the administration.

“We did what we always do, which is we just started reaching out to our networks,” said Cathy Renna, communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, who helped organize and spoke at Friday’s demonstration. Renna said she was proud of the turnout, and said LGBTQ+ people and their allies needed to be making noise in the streets – to tell the country, “we’re not going anywhere.”

“Most people say they don’t know someone who’s trans,” Renna said. “And so we need to change that, because what we do know is that if you know someone who identifies as LGBTQ, you are far more likely to better understand who we are and stand up for the community.”

The show of force also provided a sense of solidarity in the face of the administration’s attempt to cleave trans people away from the LGBTQ+ community.

“We’ve got people out here that are ready to fight for us, no matter what,” one protest attendee, Skyler Brooksby, said. “I fought so long to be who I am now, and I’m not gonna let [Trump] stop me from being the real me, the true girl that I am.”

“We have to unite,” said another, Samy Nemir Olivares. “Today is for LGBTQ, trans people. Tomorrow is for immigrants, for mothers, for teachers. We will all be affected by what is clearly an authoritarian, fascist government.”

Mackenzie, who is nonbinary and declined to give a last name, said the protest Friday reminded them of the Black Lives Matter movement, when trans people “stood up for us, and that’s that.”

“You can’t erase history, it’s already happened. And we need our trans siblings and queer siblings for the real history,” they said.

“A lot of people here needed to not only not feel erased, but [also to] remember that we have people fighting for us, and we can be people fighting for others, too.”

Real questions remain about the extent to which civic institutions like universities, nonprofits and hospitals, as well as for-profit corporations, will stand up to the White House’s transphobic policies.

Speakers on Friday called for politicians to “get their fucking shit together.” And they condemned as “fake allies” corporations, like Google and Target, that have participated in Pride celebrations in the past but have in recent months seemingly backed away from supporting the LGBTQ+ community.

In a phone interview Friday, Ben Garcia, executive director of the American LGBTQ+ Museum, said he was hoping for “greater courage” from institutions, and condemned the “rush to comply” with Trump’s various executive orders even as they faced ongoing court challenges. Some hospitals, for example, quickly ceased gender-affirming care for 19-and-under people, even though a federal judge swiftly paused Trump’s order demanding as much.

The administration, Garcia said, was trying to separate transgender and queer-identifying people from the larger LGBTQ+ movement.

“People who look at social movements recognize that there’s a pendulum effect that happens, and we are on the wrong end of a fast-moving pendulum,” he said. Luckily, Garcia added, “we know that resistance — fighting for our essential human rights, working against the erasure of an entire category of people — is something that we’re good at. It’s something that we’ve had to do for decades, and it’s something that we know how to do.”

“So it’s really good, in today’s protest, to see the power of our community surging forward,” he said.