National Park Service web pages that were once dedicated to figures such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera have been shut down and are no longer accessible.
The report of the web pages being affected comes from the National Parks Conservation Association. It notes that Johnson and Rivera, who were transgender activists, were key figures in American history, which included their involvement at the Stonewall Uprising in 1969.
The event has also seen its NPS webpage altered to remove references to transgender people.
Last month, the website was edited to have the “T” from the acronym “LGBTQ+” removed, instead reading as “LGB,” as well as the word “queer” being removed, which is represented in the letter “Q.”
“Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal, but the events at the Stonewall Inn sparked fresh momentum for the LGB civil rights movement!” the website now reads.
With web pages previously dedicated to Johnson and Rivera now being removed, NPR reports that the move is a part of the federal government’s push to remove and alter web pages related to LGBTQ history.
However, the changes haven’t been made at the same time, as some pages continue to include the letters “T” and “Q,” which stand for “transgender” and “queer,” while others still have them present. The same can be said for some sites that are dead, like one that held dozens of pages of research about LGBTQ U.S. history, but others that are still operational.
Other affected web pages include those that were dedicated to Philadelphia gay history, a now-closed Black LGBTQ bar in Washington, D.C., and a page about an eighteenth-century American preacher who was gender nonconforming.
As expected, activists and experts have come out against the recent changes to the NPS website, including Alan Spears, a senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association, who said in a statement that this was an effort to “tamper with our history” and was “unacceptable.”
“LGBTQ+ history is history, period. It should remain represented at national parks and on the National Park Service website, so that people all over the world can learn about it from the best of the best in the history preservation business,” Spears said.
“As mandated by law, dedicated National Park Service staff have poured more than one hundred years of work into preserving, protecting, and interpreting the stories that built our nation,” the statement continued. “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.”