The Stonewall National Monument, widely considered sacred ground in the LGBTQ+ rights movement, has long flown a mix of rainbow, progress, and transgender flags during Pride Month. But this year, something is conspicuously absent: the trans flags.
According to Steven Love Menendez, a photographer and LGBTQ+ advocate who helped establish the monument’s annual flag display nearly a decade ago, the National Park Service (NPS) quietly changed course this year. Despite years of precedent and federal approval, Menendez was told only traditional rainbow flags would be permitted in 2025.
“It’s a terrible action for them to take,” Menendez said to CBS News. “We’ve always included trans and progress flags to represent the full scope of our community. Now they’re deliberately cutting us out.”
The park’s 250-flag display, once a vibrant representation of the LGBTQ+ spectrum, now features only the classic six-color rainbow. The omission of transgender and progress flags comes amid broader accusations that the NPS, under the Trump administration’s second term, is actively working to erase transgender people from queer history.
Earlier this year, TransVitae reported that references to transgender and queer activists were quietly scrubbed from the Stonewall National Monument’s official website. Menendez, once listed as an LGBTQ activist, now finds his designation reduced to “LGB activist.” The “Q” and “T” have been deleted, without explanation.
For many in the community, this is more than a clerical change.
“This is state-sponsored erasure,” said Queens resident Jay Edinin, who visited the monument carrying his own transgender flag. “I’m not going to stand by and watch us be erased from our own history, from our own communities, and from the visibility that we desperately need right now.”
Visitors and allies are voicing their outrage.
“I think it’s absurd. I think it’s petty,” said Willa Kingsford, a tourist from Portland. Los Angeles resident Patty Carter echoed that sentiment: “It’s horrible. They’re changing all of our history.”
While NPS officials have not released a public statement on the decision, their silence is telling and troubling. The agency’s removal of trans-specific representation coincides with a broader federal pattern of excluding trans people from public life. From rolling back Title IX protections to cutting LGBTQ+ suicide prevention resources, the Trump administration’s second term has intensified efforts to delegitimize trans existence.
Stonewall, the site of a 1969 uprising led in large part by transgender women of color, is no ordinary landmark. It is a symbol of defiance, resistance, and trans liberation. Erasing transgender presence from its story is a calculated move, one designed to rewrite the past in order to reshape the present.
Trans advocates say they’ve seen this coming. Scrubbing the website in February was the warning shot. Removing the flags is the follow-through.
“The goal is to chip away at our inclusion until we’re invisible again,” Menendez warned. “But we won’t let them. Stonewall belongs to all of us.”
Some New Yorkers are already taking matters into their own hands. As of this week, individual visitors have begun placing their own transgender flags at the monument’s fence and around the site, small but defiant acts of reclamation.
These grassroots responses are reminders that while the government can control flagpoles, it cannot erase the people who fought and continue to fight for their right to exist.
For the transgender community, this isn’t just about visibility. It’s about memory, dignity, and truth. And the truth is this: Stonewall was trans. Stonewall is trans. And no administration can change that.
