Symbols of Resistance: The Stonewall Inn and the Rainbow Flag

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, residents of New York City rallied around the Stonewall Inn, demonstrating “against centuries of abuse; official betrayal of their human rights by virtually all segments of society; from government hostility to employment and Housing discrimination, Mafia control of Gay bars, and anti-Homosexual laws.” [1] Nearly sixty years later, on February 11, 2026, residents of New York City once again rallied around Stonewall, this time in Christopher Park across the street, to demonstrate against the Trump administration’s removal of the National Park Service Progress Pride flag two days prior. They defiantly raised an eight-striped rainbow flag, based on Gilbert Baker’s original design. The history of this flag’s display in Christopher Park reveals the tensions between LGBTQ+ visibility and legislation that seeks to resign us to the shadows once again.

Beginning in the 1990s, the Stonewall Inn came to be recognised as a symbolic location for the LGBTQ+ community even outside of queer and trans* circles. To commemorate the thirty-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprisings, the Stonewall Inn was first listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 21, 1999. The next year, it was designated a national historic landmark; in 2015 it would be recognised as a New York City landmark; and in 2016 as a New York State Historic site. [2] This same year, President Obama designated the Stonewall Inn, Christopher Street itself, as well as some nearby streets, and Christopher Park as part of a new Stonewall National Monument. This announcement came just weeks after an attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, then the largest mass shooting in the history of the United States.

The display of a rainbow flag in Christopher Park as part of the Stonewall National Monument may seem like an obvious choice, given its synonymity with the LGBTQ+ community. Yet, as federal property, legislation on what flags can and cannot be flown has politicised any potential for the display of the rainbow flag here. The first documented request to display a rainbow flag on the site came in June 2017: Michael Petrelis wrote to the National Park Service in emails that have since surfaced through a Freedom of Information request released in 2019. Ahead of National Coming Out Day on October 11, also the thirty-year anniversary of the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, Petrelis sought permission for a flag raising ceremony in Christopher Park. The National Park Service (NPS) agreed, opting to use an old nautical flagpole understood to be within the boundaries of the national monument. Due to the age of the flagpole, and the logistics of raising flags on it, the NPS raised the flag early, on September 28th.

A few newspaper articles caught wind of the rainbow flag’s display in Christopher Park, heralding it as the first permanent exhibition of a Pride flag on federal property. This permanent display had not been agreed by the NPS, who began to follow the publication of these articles closely. Noting that one article in particular had a “somewhat anti-Trump slant,” they sought to distance themselves from the flag raising ceremony. This clearly reached officials in the Department of the Interior, however, who wrote to the NPS demanding to know what was going on.

Though it is unclear how, exactly, the decision was reached, the NPS subsequently made a U-turn on their support for the display of a rainbow flag at Christopher Park (internal emails show that members were all too aware that their exchanges could be subject to a Freedom of Information request at any time, so any decision was likely reached outside of written communication). Indeed, they, and by extension the Trump administration, went to extraordinary lengths to dispute claims that the rainbow flag was now being flown on federal property.

One NPS member discovered that the old nautical flagpole that the rainbow flag was now being flown from was not, as it turned out, federal property, but belonged to New York City. Having already paid for the 3” by 5” rainbow flag, the NPS donated the flag to the New York City Parks Department, noting that they were free to fly it themselves. This scramble to reject the very notion that a rainbow flag could be flown on federal property was received as a major blow to LGBTQ+ communities in New York, who condemned it as an attack from the Trump administration. The flag still flew on October 11, though the NPS withdrew any participation from the event.

Steven Love Menendez took matters into his own hands, erecting a temporary flagpole in Christopher Park to facilitate the display of a rainbow flag at the Stonewall National Monument. According to Gay City News, who have closely followed developments at the Stonewall National Monument, this took place in 2020, though a recent article by National Today claim it first happened in 2018. Whether this became an annual tradition is currently unclear. Regardless, local activists were delighted in 2021 when the Biden administration announced its plans to erect a permanent flagpole for the display of a rainbow flag in the Stonewall National Monument. Menendez was among those who gathered to hoist the new Stonewall National Monument Progress Pride flag on June 1st, 2022.

The removal of the Stonewall National Monument Pride flag earlier this year, then, comes amongst a wave of attacks on ‘woke’ DEI initiatives, targeted by executive orders issued by Trump in his second presidency which aim to “restor[e] truth and sanity to American history.” [3] In rallying around both the rainbow flag and the streets of the Stonewall Inn, where the new spirit of LGBTQ+ liberation is said to have been born, local activists have sent a clear and defiant message to the Trump administration: we will not be erased.

Alan Lee is a research student and visiting lecturer at the University of Roehampton. His thesis, Symbols of Pride and the Politics of Queer Liberation, explores the history and politics of the Pride March in London since 1972 through an analysis of the Pride symbols used. He can be found on BlueSky @alanlee99.bsky.social.

References

[1] ‘Press Release #1: Homosexual Women and Men in Mass March’, Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee Fliers, University of Connecticut Digital Archive Collections, http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:860296684 [Accessed: February 20, 2026].

[2] “Stonewall Inn State Historic Site”, The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, https://parks.ny.gov/visit/historic-sites/stonewall-inn-state- historic-site [Accessed: February 23, 2026].

[3] “Trump officials sued over effort to ‘erase history and science’ in national parks”, The Guardian, February 18, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/17/trump-national-parks-lawsuit [Accessed: February 20, 2026].

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