National Parks Service Further Sanitizing LGBTQ+ History

It seems the National Parks Service (NPS) is not done with their attempts to erase trans people from LGBTQ+ history. After removing the T and Q+ from all instances of the LGBTQ+ acronym on their website, they have made another change and deleted pages from the Stonewall National Monument website dedicated to trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, as well as pages about queer history in Philadelphia, a gender-nonconforming preacher who lived during the eighteenth century, and a closed Black LGBTQ+ bar in D.C.

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are trans women who were at the forefront of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, leading things like the 1969 Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Riots were protests responding to police raids of gay bars and are known as the start of the LGBTQ+ rights movement as well as inspiration for smaller bouts of resistance that happen today. It is startling that the people credited for spearheading the movement that the website is dedicated to have had their history removed.

This erasure of transness and its history is in response to our current administration’s attacks on trans people and their efforts to erase and vilify LGBTQ+ identities. Alan Spears, a senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) said in a statement, “These efforts to tamper with our history set an unacceptable precedent… By removing these educational and historical materials from public access, the administration is making it harder for National Park Service staff to fulfill their obligation to tell the stories of all Americans and maintain an accurate account of history.”

From freezing passport applications with a changed gender marker, to threatening to refuse funding to healthcare providers that offer gender-affirming care to minors, to trying to mandate a definition of gender, this is so clearly an effort to erase transness from history in real time. Think about the types of books that are being banned in schools, the types of art that is being allowed, and the types that are being silenced/distorted. This administration and its followers are attempting to take away our stories so that they cannot be shared and used to empower us and our generations to come.

Michael Bronski, a Harvard University history professor remarked that many pages that were removed were about Black activists and Black spaces. He said, “Since you can’t get rid of trans people or gay people, or bisexual people, or queer people, you can try to get rid of documentation about us … That means you’re trying to rewrite history.” I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it, our stories are powerful. Just existing and telling the world that you are here is a threat to white supremacy and the regimes built on its foundations. That is why our current administration is trying so very hard to silence us. This country has tried to convince people that Native people didn’t exist anymore and that slavery “ending” meant that racism was over. It has tried to sanitize, whitewash, and distort history to brainwash and indoctrinate people so that no one objects or knows the horrible things that continue to happen.

Do not stop telling your stories. Do not stop objecting and resisting. Do not stay quiet. We will not be erased.