Obama to name Stonewall Inn National Monument

The legendary Stonewall Inn, the Greenwich Village bar at the center of the gay-rights movement, was granted landmark status last year but according to the Associated Press the Obama administration plans on naming the bar the country’s first national monument for gay rights. Per the New Yorker, Obama is, “considering proposals that would involve cordoning off Christopher Park, a small sliver of land near Stonewall Inn, and surrounding areas.” Federal officials are travelling to NYC next week to discuss the proposal while city officials iron out the details of the land’s title. If no complications arise, the Stonewall Inn should be declared a national monument in June, just in time for Pride month and the city’s famous parade.

New Yorkers and  lawmakers alike “have long pushed for the national-park designation, and last year, Congressman Jerrold Nadler and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer introduced legislation that said as much,” wrote the New Yorker.  “It’s time for the Stonewall Inn to take its place in the panoply of sites and events that were sparks in the march to the kind of freedom and equality that is the very wellspring of the American Dream,” Schumer said. “Making the Stonewall Inn site a unit of the National Park system is the right thing to do.”