The Trump administration says their removal of a rainbow Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village is merely reinforcing a decades-old policy — but during the Biden predidency the feds installed a flagpole specifically to fly the LGBTQ flag at the historic site, the Daily News has learned.
On June 1, 2022, National Park Service workers, alongside local community leaders, installed a flagpole to fly the rainbow flag for the first time permanently on federal land inside of Christopher Park near the Stonewall Inn, the Queer Review reported at the time. That flagpole is the same one the rainbow flag, emblazone with National Park Service insignia, was removed from this week, sparking a firestorm of criticism.
The National Park Service superintendent for all Manhattan sites, who has since retired, attended the 2022 ceremony, activists who were there and worked with her to make the event happen say.
The Pride flag raised in 2022, replaced one flown on a temporary makeshift flagpole installed a year earlier by LGBTQ+ activist Steven Love Menendez, who says he had approval from the Biden administration.
Love Menendez said National Park Service officials reach out to him unprompted in 2021, saying they had “a surprise” for him and were going to replace his temporary pole with the permanent one that was later installed in 2022.
Over the weekend, the large Pride flag was removed from the flagpole installed in 2022, following orders from a Jan. 21 memo from the U.S. Department of the Interior. Mayor Mamdani called the removal an “outrage” Tuesday.
Smaller rainbow flags continue to fly around and just outside the park.
A spokesman for the National Park Service claimed in a statement Tuesday the removal was in line with longstanding rules.
“The policy governing flag displays on federal property has been in place for decades,” the statement said. “Recent guidance clarifies how that longstanding policy is applied consistently across NPS-managed sites.”
There are “limited exceptions” to the rule, according to the statement. Nonagency flags can be flown to “provide historical context,” or “as an expression of the federal government’s official sentiments,” the memo said.
Local leader and activists argue that Stonewall more than qualifies for such an exceptiion to the rule.
“Stonewall is a historical event important to our American history. It really happened, and it really happened there, and the world has never been the same since,” gay rights activist Ken Kidd said Wednesday. “There are people who travel from all over the world to that spot, to see that flag, to be inspired, and have faith in their future.”
Stonewall was designated a national monument by President Barack Obama in 2016. The riot at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 is recognized as the beginning of the LGBTQ movement in the U.S. The small city park across the street from the bar became federally owned and maintained with Obama’s designation.
The January federal memo notes that flagpoles and buildings under the jurisdiction of the U.S. General Services Administration, including at the Stonewall monument, “are not intended to serve as a forum for free expression by the public.”
“Only the U.S. flag, flags of the Department of the Interior, and the POW/MIA flag will be flown by the National Park Service,” the memo states.
“They want to steal our pride, and they want us to believe that it’s not happening,” Kidd said of the feds’ justifications for the removal. “It’s a classic page out of the fascist textbook.”
In February 2025, the Trump administration controversially erased all references to the words “transgender” and “queer” from the Stonewall National Monument website.
On Wednesday afternoon a National Parks Service worker raised a U.S. flag where the Pride flag previously flew inside the park.
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said that he and other local, state and federal officials plan to raise a rainbow flag back up the flagpole in protest Thursday.
National Park Service and Department of Interior officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
