The Stonewall National Monument website has removed almost all references to bisexual people.
The official website for the Stonewall National Monument, one of the most symbolically important LGBTQ+ sites in the world, has been quietly edited to remove nearly all mentions of bisexual people from its content. This latest revision follows the earlier erasure of transgender references in February, raising further concerns about a pattern of rewriting queer history on US federal websites.
The changes, made by the National Park Service and spotted by independent journalist Erin Reed, appear to have taken place in late May. Archived versions of the site confirm that where bisexual people were previously acknowledged alongside gay and lesbian communities in the Stonewall uprising, they have now been largely scrubbed from the record. The homepage no longer mentions bisexual people at all. Pages that once used the acronym “LGB” now refer only to “gay and lesbian” individuals or the more ambiguous “Stonewall community.”
The edits were finalised just days before Pride Month began, a time when many turn to historic resources like the Stonewall website to reflect on the roots of LGBTQ+ resistance and activism. This year, visitors looking to learn about the 1969 uprising may not notice the absences, but for those who do, the omissions are glaring. Mentions of bisexual people have reportedly dropped from eight to two across the site.
Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, and State Department were among several agencies found to have quietly removed thousands of pages of LGBTQ+ content, much of it related to health, anti-violence efforts, and civil rights.
It’s not difficult to trace a line between these changes and recent executive orders aimed at dismantling diversity and inclusion efforts in both public and private sectors. The removal of terminology like “transgender” and “bisexual” from official language mirrors a push to reduce queer identities to a narrower, more historically sanitised version of events.
Yet, despite the website’s new wording, the photographs and archive materials featured in its education section continue to include trans and bisexual figures. Images of Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera remain visible, even as the language erases their identities from the narrative.
Kurt Kelly, owner of the Stonewall Inn, said the edits were “a deliberate act of invisibility that harms an already marginalised part of our LGBTQ+ community.” Stacy Lentz, co-founder of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, noted that the National Park Service is not affiliated with the bar or its charity, but condemned the erasure all the same.
The Stonewall uprising is widely recognised as a turning point in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, sparked by police raids and sustained by a coalition of people across the queer spectrum. Bisexual and trans individuals were not only present, they were among the first to resist. Attempts to reframe the events of June 1969 as a story belonging only to gay and lesbian people misrepresent the reality, and in doing so, erase the role of those who were at the heart of it.
As of now, the National Park Service has not responded to requests for comment. The edits remain live on the Stonewall website. And for many within the LGBTQ+ community, especially those whose identities are again being pushed to the margins, this means a whole lot more than just semantics.
