You’ve likely read or heard of the post-WWII poem ‘First They Came‘ by Pastor Martin Niemöller, a confessional piece about not speaking up for people from the communities the Nazis persecuted. In light of the news that the word ‘bisexual’ was removed from the Stonewall National Monument website in the US — I can’t stop thinking about it, and how perfectly it encapsulates the LGBTQIA+ community’s current circumstance.
Our version goes a little like this:
First, they came for the transgender community.
And I did not speak out — because I was not transgender.
Then they came for the drag artists.
And I did not speak out — because I was not a drag artist.
Then they came for the LGBTQIA+ teachers, the rainbow library books, the kids with two mums, the queer history being taught in schools.
And I did not speak out — because I thought, “That doesn’t affect me.”
Now, they are coming for the rest of us —
and the silence is deafening.
It’s hard to describe how I felt when I read that the word ‘bisexual’ had suddenly been completely erased from the Stonewall National Monument’s website last week, just a few months after all mentions of the word ‘transgender’ were also removed. Tbh, I knew it was going to happen eventually.
Over the course of the last year, queer friends and I have had many conversations that have centred around this, and the overarching message that I got from trans mates of mine was: ‘sure they’re coming for just us now — but eventually, they’ll come for us all’. Personally, I think it’s a rather large part of queer people feel just generally very uneasy about evverything right now. It’s like walking through some kind of heteronormative Jurassic Park and a giant T-Rex in a MAGA hat is loose and he is PISSED and looking for a sacrificial goat to eat.
So, I knew it was gonna happen — but that doesn’t mean it hurt less. It was still a gut-punch. A reminder — again and again — that we are too often forgotten. Often even by the community we’ve marched, rioted, mourned, and celebrated alongside for decades.
Some said the removal was a mistake. Others said it was just the limits of space.
But here’s the thing: bisexual people are used to hearing excuses for not being included. We’ve heard them all. We’re used to being framed as “not queer enough” by queers, and “too queer” by the straights. We’re used to being policed, spoken over, hyper-sexualised, emasculated, and doubted. And most of all, we’re used to being erased.
This isn’t just about a word on a website. It’s about a pattern.
“The erasure of bisexual people from federal websites is not just a digital oversight — it’s a deliberate act of invisibility that harms an already marginalised part of our LGBTQ+ community,” the owner of the Stonewall Inn, Kurt Kelly, told Them.
“We must unite as a community to always fight to ensure every identity under our rainbow is seen, heard, and protected. Bi visibility matters. Lives depend on it,” he added. “The fact they continue to do this on the Stonewall National Monument website is even more troubling knowing what Stonewall means to our community around the globe.”
Bisexual people have always been here. At Stonewall. Out of the bars and into the streets. On the frontlines. Under fire. On stage. In the archives. We’ve been here.
We are the largest demographic under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, spanning every gender, every culture, and growing the fastest each generation. And yet, we are still treated as an afterthought. An add-on.
But our history is not a footnote.
Make no mistake about it, comrades: those who seek to erase trans people have always had the rest of us in their sights too. The anti-trans bills in the US, the bathroom bans, the sports bans, the bans on gender-affirming healthcare — they were just the beginning. It was never going to stop there. And trans people, god bless their gorgeous souls, and their allies have been screaming this at the wider community for a long time.
You think you’re safe because you’re cis? Because you’re monogamous? Because you fit into a neat label that’s slightly more palatable to a heteronormative society? I promise you—you are not.
In recent months, some conservative lawmakers have begun threatening Obergefell v Hodges — the landmark Supreme Court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal in the United States. They’re coming for that too. They simply realised support for our community as a whole had become too overwhelming — so they decided they had to take us down by breaking us down bit by bit, community by community.
So if you didn’t speak out when they came for trans people — speak now. If you didn’t speak out when they came for drag artists— speak now. If you didn’t speak out when they took down Pride flags from classrooms — speak now. And if you didn’t speak out when bisexuals were quietly erased from our own shared history, now is the time.
So many of us are so tired, I know. But I am not giving up. I will not disappear. I will not go quietly, and I hope you will refuse to go quietly by my side. And if you’re bi, pan, queer, fluid, multi-gender attracted, or simply questioning — you are not alone.
They can leave our name off the sign, but they can’t erase our legacy.
We were there.
We are here.
And we’re not going anywhere.