Stonewall Inn Now a National Monument

Last Friday, President Obama announced that he has designated the Stonewall Inn in New York City, along with Christopher Park across the street and some other properties in the vicinity, as America's newest national monument, commemorating the modern gay rights movement that began there 47 years ago last night.

The official text of the presidential proclamation is here. 

The Park Service site is here.

The New York Times article is here.

These two announcement videos overlap a bit:






And here's a report from CBS New York:




Ya know, guys, it continues to take my breath away to realize how far we've come just in my lifetime - when Stonewall happened, I was a closeted, totally isolated teenager in a world where merely the word homosexual was loathsome and unmentionable. But now that I'm an old man, the President of the United States has declared a gay bar a national monument.  Incredible.

And I have lived to see this day.