Trump administration agrees to fly pride flag over Stonewall monument

WASHINGTON – The federal government will keep flying the pride flag over the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.

The Trump administration agreed in a decision announced Monday, April 13, to continue flying the rainbow-colored flag over the monument, which recognizes one of the most significant events in LGBTQ+ history.

The flag had flown for years atop a flagpole in a ​park across the street from the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village that was the site of a 1969 clash between bar patrons and police that has come to be regarded as the start of ⁠the modern LGBTQ+ movement.

But the government quietly removed the flag in February, just weeks after the National Park Service issued federal guidance on the types of ‌banners allowed to be flown in national parks. The government claimed the ​flag did not comply with that policy, which the park service said permitted only the U.S. flag and other approved flags on flagpoles managed by the agency.

A week later, a coalition of nonprofit groups sued, demanding the flag be returned.

As part of the settlement, the administration agreed to return the flag atop the monument’s official flagpole ⁠within seven days and maintain it permanently. The government also conceded in the settlement ‌that the flag falls within federal law ‌and park service policy.

LGBTQ+ advocates applauded the settlement and accused the Trump administration of trying to erase LGBTQ+ history.

“The sudden, arbitrary, and capricious removal of the pride flag from the Stonewall National ⁠Monument was yet another act by this administration to erase the LGBTQ+ community,” said Karen Loewy, co-counsel for the groups that sued.

With the settlement, “the government has pledged to restore this important symbol back to where it ‌belongs,” said Loewy, senior counsel and director of ‌Constitutional Law Practice for Lambda Legal, a civil rights group that advocates for the rights of LGBTQ+ people.

The Gilbert Baker Foundation, which honors the legacy of the flag’s creator, also praised the ruling.

“Gilbert Baker created the Rainbow Pride ⁠flag as a symbol of hope and liberation,” said Charles Beal, the foundation’s president. “Today, that symbol ​is restored to the place where it ⁠belongs, standing ​watch over the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.”

The flag has become an internationally recognized symbol of the push for LGBTQ+ equality and the hard-fought gains the community has won through decades of struggles.

The Stonewall National Monument commemorates a clash between police and members of the LGBTQ+ community after officers raided ⁠the Stonewall Inn in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. For six days, gay men and women, transgender people, bikers, street kids and others fed up with police harassment fought back. The riots are considered the spark that ignited the ⁠modern LGBTQ+ rights movement

The uprising is regarded as such a significant chapter in American history that President Barack Obama designated the bar’s exterior, the adjacent park and the surrounding streets as a national monument in 2016 so that what happened there and the people involved in its history would not be forgotten. ⁠The bar itself remains privately owned.

Days after the government ‌removed the flag in February, New York City officials and activists held a ​ceremony at the ‌site and hoisted it atop the flagpole again in defiance of the Trump administration.

The settlement means the flag ​will continue to fly over the monument.