https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/06/23/stonewall-national-monument-trans-flags-pride/
Visitors are placing trans flags at the Stonewall National Monument in New York, in an act of defiance after the Trump administration said only the traditional six-striped rainbow flag could be flown for Pride month.

The site, which commemorates the historic 1969 riot outside the Stonewall Inn, led by trans women of colour in the early days of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, was officially awarded national monument status in 2016 by president Barack Obama.

It has become tradition for Christopher Park, which is part of the monument and located in front of the bar, to be adorned with all types of Pride flags. This year, however, installation creator Steven Love Menendez was told by the National Park Service, which oversees the monument, to use only the rainbow flag.

It comes after the Trump administration wiped all references to trans and non-binary people from the monument website in February, part of a wider push seemingly to purge all LGBTQ+ resources and diversity, equity and inclusion content from government web pages. Advocacy group GLAAD condemned the move, branding it another example of Trump’s “blatant attempts to discriminate against, and erase the legacies of, transgender and queer Americans”.

Speaking to CBS about the park service’s diktat, Menendez said: “It’s a terrible action to take. I used to be listed as an LGBTQ activist, and now it says, ‘Steven Menendez, LGB activist’. They took out the Q and the T.”

Menendez told Gothamist the decision had left him sad but it was “not a surprise with all of the rhetoric that’s been going on”.

One of the people to bring a banned flag, Jay Edinin, from the New York borough of Queens, said: “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.”

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Gay New Yorkers DEFY Trump's anti-free speech ban on trans flags at Stonewall monument