The National Park Service's recent removal of the terms 'transgender' and 'queer' from the Stonewall National Monument website reflects a concerning trend of erasing LGBTQ+ identities and history. This change, linked to Trump's anti-LGBTQ policies, also involved the deletion of relevant educational resources and the simplification of LGBTQ+ terminology. The community's reaction was swift, leading to protests emphasizing the importance of inclusivity in history. This move raises concerns about the long-term implications for marginalized communities and reflects a broader strategy of silencing voices that challenge the current administration's narratives.
Judging from the grammatically tortured sentences left behind, this culling was probably conducted by code; it looks as though someone ran a slightly more complicated version of Find + Delete across the site.
But the defacing-and that's what it is-of the Stonewall Monument website has hit the LGBTQ community particularly hard, given the location's venerated status.
As a queer historian, I know that the erasure of history, while it might seem unimportant in the moment, is in fact always a crucial step on the road to autocracy.
Thousands of government websites presenting information running afoul of the right's 'anti-woke' crusade have been edited or taken down in just the first few weeks of the president's tenure.
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