The White House on Tuesday declined to say whether President Obama will name a New York bar known as the birthplace of the gay pride movement as the country’s first national monument honoring LGBT rights.
“I don’t have any updates on presidential designations — we’ll obviously keep you posted,” presidential press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters today in response to a question about the bar’s designation.
According to media reports, the president is holding listening sessions with the LGBT community as he considers designating the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and an adjoining park as the first LGBT rights monument. The bar is the site of a 1969 police raid of the gay bar, which was a common police practice at the time.
In the 1969 raid, the patrons fought the police and the clash touched of riots now considered the flashpoint for the beginning of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights movement.
A year after the Stonewall riots, activists staged the country’s first gay rights parade, spawning similar events in cities across the country in June each year. The parades and street parties have evolved into LGBT Pride Month, which begins Wednesday.
Stonewell is already a National Historic landmark, and the inn and the park are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Obama on Tuesday issued his annual proclamation designating the month of June as LGBT Pride Month and plans to host his annual Pride reception at the White House June 9, according to the Washington Blade. Earnest Tuesday wouldn’t confirm the event, saying that he didn’t have any details of Obama’s June calendar to detail yet.
Asked whether Obama would participate in a gay pride parade this month, Earnest said, “I’m not aware that that’s on the president’s schedule.”
In his LGBT Pride Month proclamation, Obama said his administration has worked to fight for “dignity and equality” for LGBT people that activists have long sought.
He heralded last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision guaranteeing marriage equality to LGBT couples in all 50 states, arguing that the decision affirmed the “belief that we are all more free when we are treated as equals.”
He also said there is far more work to do to protect the rights of all LGBT adults and children, when it comes to housing equality, opposing conversion therapy and promoting supportive and healthy learning environments for all students.
He gave LGBT activists credit for ushering in “sweeping progress by changing hearts and minds and by demanding equal treatment — under our laws, from our courts, and in our politics.”
“This month, we recognize all they have done to bring us to this point, and we recommit to bending the arc of our nation toward justice,” he said.
