MSNBC star Rachel Maddow outraged a Stonewall Riots hero by claiming the seminal gay rights protest was a ‘transgender riot.’
The lesbian star, 51, made the comments as she discussed a protest at the site after all mentions of trans people were removed from the Stonewall National Monument’s web page.
Maddow said the memorial ‘commemorates a riot by trans people’ – a controversial assertion that many gay activists take issue with.
‘It’s like telling Cooperstown they are no longer allowed to mention baseball anymore,’ Maddow added.
Fred Sargeant, a gay activist who participated in the 1969 riots, called out Maddow on X, accusing her of lying about the historic event and excluding the gay and lesbian community.
‘Rachel Maddow has said some weird stuff over the years but this beaut shows that she’s never read a history book about the Stonewall riots and apparently only uses trans Reddit as a source for these things,’ Sargeant wrote on X.
‘How could any lesbian not know who Stormé DeLarverie was or what the makeup of the crowd was that night? Hint: it wasn’t 500-700 transbians.’
Sargeant has been an advocate for gay rights since he participated in the six-day Stonewall Riots of 1969 and co-led the first pride parade in New York City known as the Christopher Street Liberation Day march.
Rachel Maddow angered some in the gay community after she claimed the Stonewall riots were started by transgender people
The origin of the riots has long been mired in confusion, though it appears they were started by a lesbian as she was arrested. An image of the 1969 riots is seen above
The riots, which lasted six days, broke out in the summertime after the New York City Police Department raided the Stonewall Inn and violently shut down the gay bar down, removing people violently.
The origin of the riots has long been mired in confusion; while many claim that late LGTBQ activist Marsha P Johnson was the one to start the riot, Johnson said she did not arrive the scene until the place ‘was already on fire.’
In recent years, some queer activists have insisted that the riots were led by transgender people. That assertion has angered others who say brave gay and lesbian protesters were behind the battle and who fear that their contribution is being erased to appeased 21st Century wokeness.
However, the general conclusion seems to be that it was a lesbian who sparked the riots as she was being placed in a police car outside the Stonewall and told the bystanders: ‘Why don’t you guys do something?’
Many X users also took issue with Maddow’s version of events, accusing her of abandoning her own community.
One comment read: ‘The revisionist history bend that pro trans everything has is so offensively disgusting.’
Another added: ‘Embarrassed to count her among the lesbian ranks. I almost want to turn in my lesbian card, take an axe to my toaster oven, burn my flannel shirts, and chuck my hiking boots. Nah. Let’s kick her out instead!’
A third said: ‘I thought she would be better than this. It’s gross that she supports revisionist history.’
People protested the removal of references of transgender people at the memorial in NYC
The controversy comes after references to transgender people were removed Thursday from a National Park Service website for the Stonewall National Monument, a park and visitor center in New York that commemorates a 1969 riot that became a pivotal moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
The changes were made in the wake of an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female.
‘This is just cruel and petty,’ New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, posted on X.
‘Transgender people play a critical role in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights — and New York will never allow their contributions to be erased.’
The monument in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village section is based in a tiny park across the street from the Stonewall Inn, a bar that became ground zero for the gay rights movement on June 28, 1969, when gay and transgender patrons and neighborhood residents fought back against a police raid.
The park service website on Friday was still filled with information about the uprising, including photographs of noted transgender activists.
LGTBQ activist Marsha P Johnson said she did not arrive the scene until the place ‘was already on fire’
But the words ‘transgender’ and ‘queer’ had been deleted from text that had been on the site.
Also, the letters T and Q were cut from various references to the acronym LGBTQ and replaced with phrases like the ‘LGB rights movement’ or ‘LGB civil rights.’
Representatives of the present-day Stonewall Inn, which is part of the national monument, and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, a nonprofit organization associated with the historic bar, expressed anger and outrage over the changes.
‘This blatant act of erasure not only distorts the truth of our history, but it also dishonors the immense contributions of transgender individuals — especially transgender women of color — who were at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots and the broader fight for LGBTQ+ rights,’ said organizers of the two entities in a statement.
Some prominent gays have complained that the LGBT rights movement has been taken over by extreme trans activists in recent years.
They warn those activists support for unpopular positions on transgender children and transgender women in sports have made life more difficult for regular gays, lesbians and trans people who fought to be treated the same and left alone.