(LifeSiteNews) – A “nonbinary” park ranger at Yosemite National Park was fired for hanging a massive transgender “pride” flag on the El Capitan rock formation in protest of the Trump administration’s policies.
NBC News reported that Shannon “SJ” Joslin, a wildlife biologist specializing in bats who uses “they” and “them,” participated with other LGBT climbers in the protest display in May, outside of work hours, ostensibly to “celebrate trans people and show that everyone is welcome in the nation’s parks.” The banner flew for two hours before park officials ordered it to be taken down.
Joslin was subsequently fired on August 12 from her job, which she held since 2021. Park officials would not talk in detail about the case, but National Park Service (NPS) spokeswoman Rachel Pawlitz said NPS and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) were “pursuing administrative action against several Yosemite National Park employees and possible criminal charges against several park visitors who are alleged to have violated federal laws and regulations related to demonstrations.”
“We want to emphasize that we take the protection of the park’s resources and the experience of our visitors very seriously, and will not tolerate violations of laws and regulations that impact those resources and experiences,” Pawlitz said.
Joslin claims there was no policy against flag-hanging before her and her colleagues’ stunt. On May 20, a memo was circulated establishing that “Within the designated Wilderness and Potential Wilderness Addition portions of the park it is prohibited for any person or group to hang or otherwise affix to any natural or cultural feature, or display so as to cover any natural or cultural feature, any banner, flag, or sign larger than fifteen square feet (e.g., 5 feet x 3 feet), or a series or combination of banners, flags, or signs that total more than 15 square feet in aggregate, unless authorized by permit.”
“Hanging flags has been a tradition that climbers have done on El Cap for decades, and that’s both individuals who are visiting the park, but also employees that are on their off time,” Joslin said. “There’s never been any kind of ramifications to any of those flag-hanging activities. I’m the only one who’s been fired for it.” In the past, left-wing activists have on separate occasions erected an upside-down American flag and a Gaza “Stop the Genocide” banner.
Joslin told Them.us she is considering a wrongful termination suit in consultation with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and intends to “fight this as hard as I can.”
Whatever the technical merits of Joslin’s termination, the intrusion of left-wing virtue-signaling in numerous non-partisan aspects of life has been a significant contribution to the “anti-woke” backlash that helped return President Donald Trump to office and compelled various businesses to scale back their support for LGBT “pride.”
After the 2024 election, polling by the pro-Democrat firm Blueprint found the statement “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class” was the third-biggest reason for why overall voters chose not to vote for her, and the number one reason why swing voters rejected her and voted instead for Trump.
“Giddy (World Pride DC 2025) planners had anticipated up to 3 million mostly LGBT individuals from around the world would descend upon and overwhelm the nation’s capital for another three weeks of in-your-face LGBT celebrations from mid-May until early June, but the large crowds failed to materialize,” LifeSiteNews’ Doug Mainwaring wrote on July 1. “WPDC25 was a bust, and so was the just-ended LGBT ‘Pride Month’ across much of the nation.”
