Seventy-two Democratic lawmakers have called for the restoration of references to transgender and queer Americans that were removed from Stonewall National Monument in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron.
Stonewall National Monument in New York's Greenwich Village was the first unit of the national park system dedicated to LGBTQIA+ equality. It honors the legacy of the Stonewall Rebellion, when LGBTQIA+ members fought back at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969 to demand their rights.
“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,” the lawmakers wrote. “The story of Stonewall cannot be told without the stories of transgender Americans.”
The letter references a June 9 memo released by the NPS that requires all NPS units to post signs inviting the public to provide feedback on any information they believe portrays American history and landscape in a negative light. The memo was in response to President Trump's “Restoring Truth and Reason in American History” executive order, which ordered the removal of any signage or interpretive information that “contains descriptions, depictions or other content that inappropriately disparages past or living Americans.”
Earlier this year, the National Park Service removed the “T” and “Q” from LGBTQ in the first sentence on the monument’s website. The Park Service also deleted “transgender” from most of the site, although the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center” was still mentioned.
After more than 100 queer and transgender stories were removed from NPS websites, the Resistance Rangers, a group that fought the Trump administration's efforts to erase history, stepped in to preserve the stories. The Rangers Uncensored website compiles edited and deleted NPS webpages available through the Internet Archive.
“Erasing trans, queer and gender diverse people from the stories told on NPS websites silences and obscures people who have been here a long time and are queer, thereby actively enriching our country's history,” said Alyssa Samek, associate professor of rhetoric at Cal State Fullerton.
The lawmaker's letter also expresses concern about reports of weaker evidence of the internment of Japanese Americans, massacres of Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans. Signs discussing climate change were also targeted.
“National Park System units play a critical role in preserving and interpreting our nation’s history, including its most difficult chapters,” the lawmakers wrote. “Efforts to reshape historical interpretation to suit political or ideological preferences risk undermining public trust and the Park Service’s credibility.”
The letter calls for the immediate restoration of all publicly available materials at Stonewall, as well as a briefing to discuss how history will be rewritten across NPS units, including how the Park Service plans to use visitor feedback to change or remove content across the national park system.