A permanent Pride flag will be installed on the Stonewall National Monument

The Stonewall National Monument on pride weekend 2016.
Photo: Rhododendrites via Wikimedia Commons

The Biden administration is allowing a plan to move forward for raising a Pride Flag and installing a permanent flag pole in Christopher Park, right across from Stonewall Inn and on federal property encompassed by the Stonewall National Monument.

Under the Trump administration, activists weren’t able to raise a flag pole or Pride flag despite repeated requests with the National Park Service (NPS) that were ultimately not accepted.

Related: Statue of trans icon Marsha P. Johnson erected in New York City park

Gay City News reports that after years of disputing whether the proposed placement of the flagpole was federal land or not, the Biden administration and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has received the proposal and is allowing the plan to move forward.

“This new flagpole will be permanently located front and center in the beautiful gardens inside Christopher Park,” NPS regional director Gay Vietzke said in a letter to Michael Petrelis, an activist organizing for the flagpole’s placement for years.

“I’m ecstatic that the rainbow flag will fly 24/7 on federal property that is part of the Stonewall National Monument,” Petrelis said about the news. “I was happy that the Rainbow Flag was flying on the Greenwich Village flagpole… but it was not federal property, and that was my ultimate goal.”

In 2019, it was revealed that the Trump administration chose not to lay claim to public land operated by NPS, which prevented activists from moving forward with raising a Pride flag on in 2017.

A short 2017 email in the 992-page email dump from then-assistant deputy secretary at the Department of the Interior Todd Willens read…

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