Yards upon yards of the transgender pride flag draped the stairs of one of the country's most famous national monuments. On Monday, transgender activists unfurled the flag at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against the Trump administration's record on transgender rights.
The protest came a week after The New York Times reported that it reviewed a draft memo from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). According to the newspaper, the department had proposed to restrict the definition of gender to pure biology, defined according to the genitalia they have at birth. The publication also noted that such a definition would "essentially eradicate federal recognition" for the transgender community in the United States.
The HHS' memo proposed pushing for a legal definition of sex to the Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, according to The Times. The federal law forbids federally-funded educational programs and institutes from discriminating on the basis of sex.
Politicians have roundly criticized the potential redefinition of gender under Trump's presidency. Among them was Massachusett Rep. Joe Kennedy III, who spearheads the House LGBT Equality Caucus' Transgender Equality Task Force.
"This nation's darkest days have always come when our government deemed civil rights conditional," he said in a statement to The Hill. "The Trump administration’s ongoing assault on transgender Americans betrays not just that history and not just the progress for which millions have bravely sacrificed, but our most fundamental responsibility to treat and see each other as human."
This won't be the first time that protesters used the transgender pride flag to make themselves heard. On Sunday, just one day before the Lincoln Memorial protest, people at a World Series game between the Red Sox and the Dodgers unveiled a large transgender pride flag that read, "Trans People Deserve to Live."
Although the flag was not a hundred feet long, it was large enough to have delivered its message across the massive Dodger stadium in Los Angeles. Baseball columnist Jeff Passan for Yahoo! Sports tweeted a photo of the flag.
