Alongside images of iconic civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, visitors to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. will now be able to view a photo of a transgender “sex worker” in the gallery’s exhibit titled “Struggle for Justice.”

The taxpayer-funded Smithsonian recently announced the gallery would feature a photo of Sylvia Rivera, a transgender individual who is said – in an NPG blog post – to be “a leading figure in the quest for LGBTQ rights.”

According to the blog post, the photograph features Rivera “between her partner Julia Murray and Christina Hayworth…hands interlocked, sitting on a stone wall with a sign at their feet that reads ‘Respect Trans People//Men!’”

The three were reportedly photographed just before the 2000 Gay Pride Parade in New York City.

NPG continues:

The three women are shown joined together in the movement to ensure equal protection for the transgender community. As a Latina who spent much of her life homeless, Rivera was particularly sensitive to the struggles of trans people of color and those living in poverty.

The photo description goes on to say that Rivera is well known for her “participation in the Stonewall riots of 1969, an event that revolutionized the gay rights movement.” Nevertheless, there was conflict between Rivera and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) – which rejected the part transgenders played in the riots.

Eventually, NPG states Rivera launched the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with a black transgender woman friend. Rivera and her friend also started STAR House to help gay homeless individuals.

“Rivera’s legacy has led to organizations like the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which ‘works to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine their gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race,” says NPG. “This organization is continuing Rivera’s lifelong work to ensure a stable and safe existence for transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming people.”

As CNSNews.com reports, spokeswoman for NPG Bethany Bentley said the decision to include Rivera’s photograph was made by NPG director Kim Sajet. A video at the gallery depicts protests by homosexuals, “including a speech by playwright and gay rights activist Larry Kramer, who said homosexual men were being intentionally allowed to die from HIV/AIDS and called it ‘a genocide.’”

The gallery’s Civil Rights exhibit has been the subject of controversy recently over another of its images – a bust of Planned Parenthood founder and eugenicist Margaret Sanger. In August, a group of black ministers – led by Bishop E.W. Jackson – sent a letter to Sajet, urging the removal of Sanger’s likeness because of her support of black eugenics.

Jackson, who leads the group of pastors known as STAND, tells Breitbart News the inclusion of the transgender photo is “another indication of the moral and spiritual degeneration in this country that is being led by this administration.”

“So, here we have a ‘sex worker’ honored in the National Portrait Gallery?” he asks incredulously. “We’re honoring a prostitute – we’re honoring people who sell their bodies?”

Jackson describes the invasion of the militant LGBT agenda as “almost psychotic and delusional.” He continued that the addition of a transgender sex worker to an exhibit honoring black civil rights workers is “a grand deception.”

“While I don’t believe we should wallow in our past, black folks in America were brought here from Africa, enslaved for 250 years, experienced Jim Crow another 100 years, and all kinds of other discrimination, lynchings and so forth – and thank God our country is grown out of that,” he acknowledges. “But to suggest that this is the equivalent of that – that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender is the ‘new black’ – is not only preposterous, but downright offensive.”

Jackson says he is convinced President Obama is behind forcing the LGBT agenda on the nation.

“Giving presidential approval to this agenda has opened the floodgates to all kinds of really disgusting things that we are all now supposed just to go along with,” he asserts. “Somehow we’re bigots and haters because we don’t go along with this new ‘moral order.’ Well, this new ‘moral order’ is ‘moral degeneracy’ – plain and simple.”

Jackson says this agenda is really aimed at Christians – who must resist going along with it. He believes honoring people like Sanger and a transgender sex worker will continue in national venues like the Smithsonian until a new president is elected “who sets a different kind of standard for the federal government and federal agencies.”

“The gallery will never remove the Sanger bust because Barack Obama will be the first to say it should not be removed,” he explains. “Remember, this is the person who removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the White House! Churchill – who helped us win World War II – so it shows how skewed his vision is for who ought to be honored and extolled for their virtues.”

“As long as Obama is in office, the likelihood is that the NPG will continue to honor Margaret Sanger” and sex workers, he continues.

“It is my prayer that we get a president who ends that abominable policy and takes the Sanger bust and the transgender sex worker out of there, and puts in people who need to be honored,” Jackson said. “We can’t as Christians sanction and justify sin, and that’s exactly what this is – of the most abominable order.”