Rainbow flag flies at U.S. monument

Gay rights activists who worked to get a rainbow flag installed permanently at the newly created Stonewall National Monument are upset the National Park Service says the flag isn’t actually on federal land but on property owned by the city.

The distinction may seem like a minor one because the flag is still flying either way. But to the group that had lobbied for the flag to be added to the site, the Park Service’s surprise announcement that the city, not the federal government, would be maintaining the flag and its pole seemed like a betrayal.

“They’re trying to make the gay community insignificant,” said Scott Gorenstein, a spokesman for Wednesday’s flag dedication event. “They’re trying to make us disappear. We’re saying we are here, this is our flag.”

The Park Service denied that any slight was intended, but the dispute threatened to dim the mood at the dedication ceremony, in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

President Barack Obama created the Stonewall National Monument last year in an area around the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar where patrons resisted a police raid in 1969, giving a spark to the nascent gay rights movement.

The monument, the nation’s first federal monument to gay rights, covers several blocks, but a small city park across the street from the Stonewall Inn became federally owned and maintained because of the designation.