National Park in Honor of Stonewall

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Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York and Representative Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan unveiled a campaign on Sunday to create a national park honoring the Stonewall uprising, vowing that they would mount a petition drive urging President Obama to grant protected status to the site of a pivotal early clash in the movement for gay equality.

Standing in front of Christopher Park, the narrow green wedge opposite the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, and flanked by nearly a dozen government officials and activists, the two lawmakers said they would introduce legislation for a national park there.

But both Ms. Gillibrand and Mr. Nadler, both Democrats, said success was far more likely to come through presidential fiat than by an act of the Republican-controlled Congress.

“We must have federal recognition of the L.G.B.T. movement’s history and origins and ensure that this piece of L.G.B.T. history is preserved for future generations,” Mr. Nadler said.

Without presidential action, he said, the park proposal would face “a long and uncertain road, as so many things are in Congress today.”

The Stonewall Inn, where bar patrons resisted a 1969 police raid and helped touch off a more aggressive phase of the fight for gay rights, has already been designated as a landmark by New York City.

But Ms. Gillibrand said a federal park at the site would help give proper recognition to the gay rights movement. She compared the proposed monument to the Women’s Rights national historical park in Seneca Falls, N.Y., which honors the movement for women’s equality, and the Selma-to-Montgomery national historic trail, which commemorates the 1965 march for black civil rights.

A host of senior New York Democrats have endorsed the campaign for a national park at Stonewall, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and Senator Chuck Schumer.