National Park Service Quietly Edits Out Bisexuals From Stonewall Page
After removing transgender people from the Stonewall page earlier this year, the National Park Service has now stripped out most mentions of bisexuals as well.
The National Park Service has quietly edited the official Stonewall National Monument website, removing most mentions of bisexual people from its pages. Once described as a landmark in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, the monument’s description now refers only to “gay and lesbian” people, leaving bisexual and transgender identities out of the picture almost entirely.
These edits follow a similar pattern of erasure that began earlier this year, when the word “transgender” was removed from the monument’s description. That change sparked widespread criticism and led to protests outside the Stonewall Inn. The government’s action is part of a larger pattern under the Trump administration, which has targeted trans and queer communities by rolling back inclusive policies and removing public resources.
Archived versions of the website, accessible through the Wayback Machine, show how the language has shifted over time. Less than a year ago, the site acknowledged that “almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal” before the 1960s. Then it changed to “LGB.” Now, it simply reads “gay or lesbian.”
“This blatant act of erasure not only distorts the truth of our history, but it also dishonours the immense contributions of transgender individuals – especially transgender women of colour,” The Stonewall Inn and the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative wrote in a statement earlier this year. Now, the same criticism is being raised about the removal of bisexual representation.
As first noted by independent journalist Erin Reed, even a sentence describing Stonewall as a milestone for “LGBTQ civil rights” has been updated to remove those letters. It now calls the uprising a milestone for “gay and lesbian civil rights.”
A petition launched in March calling on the government to stop altering the website has gathered over 47,000 signatures. For many in the LGBTQ+ community, especially those who lived through the early years of the movement, these edits are more than symbolic. They’re personal.
The people who stood up at Stonewall were gay, yes, but also trans, bisexual, and queer. Many didn’t have the words we use today, but they knew what they were fighting for. They knew what it meant to be targeted for who they were.
Removing those identities from the official record doesn’t change what happened. It just makes the truth harder to see and harder to hold onto.
We won’t let it be rewritten.
