This one pretty much speaks for itself. The monument is to be the site of the “Stonewall riot” in Greenwich Village in 1969: Stonewall Inn.
Yes, Obama plans to make a United States national monument of a gay hook-up bar.
But it’s even better than that. According to the Washington Post, the alleyways around the Stonewall Inn will also be incorporated in the monument.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
President Obama is poised to declare the first-ever national monument recognizing the contributions of the nation’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, singling out a sliver of green space and part of the surrounding Greenwich Village neighborhood as the birthplace of America’s modern gay liberation movement.
While most national monuments have highlighted iconic wild landscapes or historic sites from centuries ago, this reflects the country’s diversity of terrain and topography in a different vein: It would be the first national monument anchored by a dive bar, surrounded by a warren of narrow streets that long has been regarded the historic center of gay cultural life in New York.
Federal officials, including Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, National Park Service director Jonathan B. Jarvis and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), will hold a listening session on May 9 to solicit feedback on the proposal. Barring a last-minute complication–officials are still investigating the history of the land title–Obama is prepared to designate the area part of the National Park Service as soon as next month, which commemorates gay pride.
So: barring complication, the gay dive bar will soon enjoy the same ministrations from the taxpayer-funded National Park Service as Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Valley Forge, the Civil War battle site at Gettysburg, the Abraham Lincoln home in Springfield, Illinois, the trail of the Selma-to-Montgomery March in Alabama, and Mount Rushmore.
The website Queerty offers some “facts you may not know” about the Stonewall Inn of 1969, including its Mafia ownership and unseemly sanitation conditions.
Congratulations, America. When these things are made government-backed causes, it’s never just about “tolerance.” It always becomes, eventually, about making everyone bow down to a false god. If you don’t want to bow down to false gods, don’t let government’s charter grow, to raise them up before you and tax you to maintain their shrines.
