With this weekend marking the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling on legalizing gay marriage, President Obama will designate the Stonewall Inn in New York City as a new National Monument, the first official National Park Service monument dedicated to the plight of LGBT Americans. The protected area will include Christopher Park across from the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, which has long served as a landmark for the LGBT community.
The inn, a popular gay bar, continues to serve as a gathering place for demonstrations. The Stonewall riots in 1969 marked a major turning point in the fight for gay rights. The monument commemorates the protests and riots on June 28, 1969, when the New York Police Department raided the Stonewall Inn seeking to crack down on a law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages to homosexuals. The riots were seen as an inflection point in the LGBT community as protests spread to cities across the country. FULL REPORT
