June 2, 2023

Welcome to Pride Month, a month which we celebrate and commemorate the humanity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual individuals. The term is an initialism (a close cousin of the word ‘acronym’) and has grown and expanded since the 1970’s to include more terms and identities as awareness of sexual orientation and gender identity has grown over the last 50+ years.

June was selected as Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall Riots, which were a response to a police raid of the Stonewall Inn in New York City's Greenwich Village in 1969. The protest began when people refused to disperse after police began arresting bar patrons and employees in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969.

Located just 1.5 miles from Epstein’s New York office, the Stonewall Inn is recognized as a National Monument for its role in queer history. Due to laws that criminalized homosexual behavior, arresting queer people for assembling in private spaces was a common occurrence at the time, and the patrons of The Stonewall Inn fought back in a way that garnered attention of the queer community in New York City, and later, many other places in the country. The demonstrations in and around the Stonewall Inn and Christopher Park lasted six days until July 3, 1969.

For more information on the National Monument designation and the historic events that took place, visit this link.

We are honored to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, through the month of June and beyond!

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Christopher Park / National Monument adjacent to the Stonewall Inn

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