Miss Simone (left) watches Shirley McKinney and Steven Love Menendez carry the Rainbow Flag up into the air at Christopher Park in 2022 — again when the Biden administration allowed the flag to go up, full with black and brown stripes and the colours of the Trans Flag.
Photograph by Donna Aceto/Homosexual Metropolis Information
One phrase springs to thoughts when contemplating the Trump administration’s removing of the Delight flag from the Stonewall Nationwide Monument: Ignorance.
There’s the apparent ignorance of historical past. Stonewall was the muse of the fashionable LGBTQ+ rights motion, starting with the riots of 1969. The rainbow colours had been a product of the motion born out of Stonewall — one which, to at the present time, calls for recognition and respect for all folks no matter sexual orientation and gender identification.
For the Delight flag to not fly over the very monument devoted to each one who fought by way of the many years for that recognition and respect is the peak of ignorance for LGBTQ+ Individuals.
Then there’s the brazen ignorance of the second Trump administration, really a gaggle that thinks it may possibly do no matter it desires, at any time when it desires, to hurt as many individuals as humanly potential.
It has tried to dehumanize the transgender group by limiting entry to gender-affirming care and searching for to take the T out of LGBTQ+ by eradicating references to the transgender group from the Stonewall Monument’s website. Later, it additionally eliminated references to bisexual Individuals.
And when New York officers grew incensed over the removing of the Delight flag from Stonewall, Trump’s Division of the Inside (which administers the Stonewall Monument through the Nationwide Park Service) responded with a press release seemingly written by a right-wing Twitter troll — avoiding the problem altogether, and as a substitute attacking elected officers and mendacity concerning the metropolis’s high quality of life.
The iconoclastic ignorance of the Trump administration at Stonewall shouldn’t be solely a risk to the LGBTQ+ group in New York and past, however to all Individuals who worth freedom, civil rights, the Structure, and respect.
Make no mistake, this isn’t about mere symbolism; it is a state-sanctioned assault on a whole phase of the inhabitants. It’s an effort to decrease and dehumanize LGBTQ+ Individuals and take away their voice and their energy.
And if this state-sanctioned assault succeeds in marginalizing one group, then different communities will endure the identical destiny.
We can’t enable this ignorance to proceed. The Trump administration should cease its brazen assaults on the LGBTQ+ group, and restore the rainbow flag to its rightful place above the Stonewall Monument instantly.
And the folks of this metropolis should ship a message to their representatives on Capitol Hill: Cease supporting Trump’s agenda till his regime stops attacking his fellow Individuals.
