At the Eastern end of the somewhat triangular park across from the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in NYC is a nautical style flag pole. It stands on the rounded edge of the bricked park at the pedestrian walkway that separates the footprint of the park from the gardened pointy end of the full triangle. The park and the Stonewall Inn are part of the Stonewall National Monument, and the National Park service has been flying its flag on that flag pole since the Inn and park got the National Park designation.
This past week the Rainbow flag was hoisted at a ceremony beginning its presence at the park. As part of the event, the Park Service had donated a rainbow flag and had given permission to have the Rainbow Pride flag fly on the pole opposite the NPS flag and began flying it last month. However, shortly before the scheduled event the NPS announced that the pole was actually not on Park property.
Why this sudden action?
It is clear from the actions of the Trump administration that it has an animus toward the GLBT community and the civil rights of its members.
President Trump released a memo directing Defense Department to move forward with discharging transgender military service members and to maintain a ban on recruitment when he sent a tweet saying “the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”
The Justice Department has decided to:
allow federal agencies, government contractors, government grantees, and even private businesses to engage in discrimination against GLBT people based on religious reasons for breaking anti-discrimination laws;
instruct Department of Justice attorneys to take the legal position that federal law does not protect transgender workers from discrimination;
file a legal brief on behalf of the United States in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing for a constitutional right for businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;
abandon its lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s anti-transgender law that replaced th anti-Gay HB2 with one that is anti-transgender law;
review civil rights settlement agreements with police departments that included critical protections for LGBT people that were put in place where police departments were engaging in discriminatory and abusive policing;
file a legal brief on behalf of the United States in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, arguing that the 1964 Civil Rights Act does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity; and
declined to appeal a nationwide preliminary court order temporarily halting enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination protections for transgender people.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development removed four key resource document links from its website which had informed emergency shelters on best practices for serving transgender people. It also made the announcement that it would withdraw a policy that would have required HUD-funded emergency shelters to put up a poster or “notice” to residents of their right to be free from anti-GLBT discrimination, and another cancelling a survey to evaluate the impact of the GLBT Youth Homelessness Prevention Initiative, implemented by HUD and other agencies..
It supplies recommended order generic levitra essential nutrients to nourish the reproductive organs. We would do forms by the hour. best prices cialis http://amerikabulteni.com/2012/05/11/sagliginiz-askina-iki-dakika-ayaga-kalkin/ Don’t delay getting a diagnosis if the pain is very bad or it has become discover for more viagra cheap prescription chronic. Impotency is a tadalafil sale sickness in which a person begins losing his locks in a certain pattern.
The Department of Education reversed its finding that an Ohio school district discriminated against a transgender girl.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reversed regulations interpreting the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination provisions to protect transgender people, and also announced that its national survey of older adults, and the services they need, would no longer collect information on LGBT participants. It removed demographic questions about GLBT people that helped HHS evaluate programs that serve people with disabilities from report hat the Centers for Independent Living must fill out each year in their Annual Program Performance Report
The Justice and Labor Departments cancelled quarterly conference calls with LGBT organizations, and withdrew guidance explaining how schools must protect transgender students under the federal Title IX law.
The Census Bureau cancelled a proposal to collect demographic information on GLBT people in the 2020 Census.
The State Department’s official U.S. delegation to the UN’s 61st annual Commission on the Status of Women conference included two outspoken anti-GLBT organizations, including an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And President Trump was the keynote speaker at the Values Voters Summit this week in D.C. hosted by the anti-GLBT Family Research Council where he let attendees know it was time to reclaim their heritage by returning to the days when discrimination against GLBT people in all aspects of American society was a given but this go round claiming it was based on religious belief so they can cite the First Amendment as that which gives them permission.
So, even though permission had been granted to have the Pride Flag fly on that pole, the administration saw that it would look like they were pro-Gay, and took steps to create distance.
In spite of the pole being in the park, the Department of the Interior declared the flag pole was actually on city property which would distance the administration from any support of the flag’s presence as it would not actually be on federal property.
Google Maps clearly shows the pole is on the brick surface of the island that is bounded by Christopher, Grove, and West Fourth Streets, the area describing the location of the park on the National Park Service’s website.
The National Park Service has now also abandoned responsibilities as proprietor and caretaker of a nautical flagpole, giving possession of it to the City of New York for management and maintenance.
Now the Trump administration can claim that the flag is not flying on federal land.
Mr. Trump must be heaving a sigh of relief that he found a way to further abandon the GLBT Community.
His hate group friends have more reason to love him.