Like so many others around the world, I’m still riding the high of Benito’s Super Bowl halftime performance, which featured a tear-jerking message about global unity. Unfortunately, we still woke up in Trump’s America, where too much joy feels illegal. And this week has felt spiritually trying since I learned that the Trump administration forced the Stonewall National Monument in New York City — the birthplace of the LGBTQ+ rights movement — to take down its Pride flag.

The flag was taken down in accordance with a new rule set last month by the Department of the Interior, which issued federal guidance on displaying “non-agency” flags in national parks, The New York Times reports. According to those guidelines, only the U.S. flag and congressionally approved flags can be flown on National Park poles, “with limited exceptions.”

I don’t know about you, but that “limited exceptions” part sure sounds like a loophole for the government to only fly the flags that Trump endorses. Because if there is any exception for the flags that can be flown, the Pride flag at the Stonewall Monument sure as hell seems like it should be one of them.

In 2016, President Barack Obama made the Stonewall Inn, a bar where trans and queer people protested against police brutality in the ’60s, a national monument, ensuring its protection. In 2024, just before Trump won the election, the Stonewall opened a brand new visitors center where people could learn more about the site’s history.

Ever since Trump’s second term, though, he’s been relentlessly targeting the Stonewall Inn in subtle but shady ways. Last year, all mention of trans people was erased from the National Park Service’s Stonewall site, despite the fact that it was trans leaders such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera who led groundbreaking protests.

Targeting the flags of marginalized communities feels especially resonant right now, in light of Bad Bunny’s iconic and meaningful Super Bowl halftime performance (which again, we’ll never shut up about), and the cultural relevance of flags as symbols of resistance. One of Benito’s guests, Lady Gaga, wore a Luar dress in the baby blue color of the original Puerto Rican flag, and during the climax of the halftime show, Bad Bunny had an entourage of dancers waving the flags of every country in the Americas. During a time when Trump wants to divide us, flags have become ways for communities to express unity and a shared struggle.

On a personal level, the Stonewall Inn was one of the places where I had my gay awakening as an 18-year-old freshly moved to New York City. The West Village, where the bar is located, was one of the few neighborhoods in the country that truly felt like a utopia for queer and trans people. There have been Pride flags there long before it was a national landmark. And as the neighborhood and other parts of Manhattan become less gay thanks to gentrification, banning Pride flags at Stonewall feels pretty damn personal.

But if there’s anything I know about true New Yorkers, it’s that we won’t take this lightly. We might live in Trump’s America, but New York has always been a beacon of progress no matter what else is going on across the country. A flag ban will be met with more flags, and a louder, more insufferable amount of gay.