NEW YORK — The Trump administration said Monday it will keep flying a rainbow Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, reversing course after removing the banner in February.
The government revealed the decision in court papers as it agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by LGBTQ+ and historic preservation groups who had sought to block the removal. A judge must still approve the deal.
The Interior Department and National Park Service “have confirmed their intention to maintain a Pride flag at Stonewall,” lawyers for the government and the groups wrote in a joint court filing. It won’t be removed, except for “maintenance or other practical purposes,” the filing said.
Under the agreement, within a week, the Park Service will hang three flags on the Stonewall monument flagpole in Manhattan. The Pride flag will fly between the U.S. flag and the Park Service flag. Each flag will measure three feet by five feet (.9 meters by 1.5 meters).
“We fought the Trump administration and won,” said Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat who helped organize a protest Pride flag raising at the monument after the government-authorized banner was removed.
“We as an LGBTQ community celebrate the legal climb-down by the gutless Trump Administration on their contemptuous attempt to erase queer people from American history at Stonewall, the birthplace of the worldwide LGBTQ human rights movement,” said Hoylman-Sigal, who is the first openly gay person elected to his job.
The Pride flag had become a flashpoint for arguments over President Donald Trump ’s approach to the Stonewall site — the first national monument commemorating LGBTQ+ history — and various other historical properties.
After a yearslong campaign by activists who wanted the flag symbolizing LGBTQ+ pride to be flown daily inside the park service-run site, the banner was formally installed in 2022, during Democratic President Joe Biden ’s tenure.
At the time, park service officials in New York called the display a sign of the government’s commitment to “telling the complex and diverse histories of all Americans.”
But in February, the park service removed the flag, in what the agency explained as compliance with federal guidance on flag displays. A Jan. 21 park service memo largely restricts the agency to displaying the U.S., Department of the Interior and POW/MIA flags, with exemptions that include providing “historical context.”
The park service insisted that the monument “remains committed to preserving and interpreting the history and significance of this site” through various exhibits and programs. But LGBTQ+ activists saw the flag’s removal as a targeted affront meant to diminish a site that is all about their fight for rights and visibility.
Advocates and some New York Democratic elected officials turned up soon after with another rainbow flag and — after some heated moments when the politicians seemed content to leave it on a separate, lower pole — raised it up alongside the U.S. flag that the park service had installed.
Democratic President Barack Obama created the Stonewall monument in 2016. The monument centers on a tiny park across the street from the Stonewall Inn, the gay bar where a 1969 police raid sparked an uprising and helped catalyze the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
After Trump, a Republican, returned to office last year, he took aim at diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and protections for transgender people. In one outcome of his policies, many references to transgender people were excised from the monument’s website and materials.
Trump’s administration similarly has put national parks, museums and landmarks under a messaging microscope, aiming to remove or alter materials that the government says are “divisive or partisan” or “inappropriately disparage Americans.”
Peltz and Sisak write for the Associated Press.
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