The National Park Service on Thursday eliminated references to transgender people from its Stonewall National Monument web page, the latest step in the Trump administration’s campaign to insist that the federal government recognize only two genders: male and female.
The move to strike the word “transgender” from the website for the first Park Service site devoted to America’s gay rights movement elicited anger in the symbolic heart of New York City’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
“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.”
On Wednesday, according to a version of the Park Service website saved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the introductory text on the monument’s main page said: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal.” By Thursday afternoon, the word “transgender” and the letter T in the abbreviation had been removed from the page.
The Park Service’s public affairs department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Stonewall Inn has been considered a cradle of America’s gay rights movement since a police raid there in 1969 touched off three days of protests that helped galvanize a long-marginalized population into a force for political and social change.
The 7.7-acre national monument — which includes the bar, Christopher Park across the street, and several other nearby streets and sidewalks — was established under President Barack Obama in 2016.
A Park Service ranger at the monument’s visitor center said on Thursday that she had not been informed about the changes to the website and had just noticed that the “T” was missing. She declined to provide her name and would not comment further.
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