A landmark 2016 theme study that highlighted the history of the LGBTQ community was pulled from the National Park Service website on Feb. 20.
Last week, NPS received instructions to remove the “T” and “Q” from “LGBTQ” from all internal and external communications, triggering an uproar when trans people were removed from the website of the Stonewall National Monument.
At that time, an internal debate ensued over what to do with the LGBTQ Theme Study, with Trump political appointees calling for removal of all transgender references and some NPS staffers pushing back, suggesting instead that the entire study be removed. Editing the document to remove one community’s contributions violates the academic intent of the project, the source told the Blade.
In 2014, the Gill Foundation recognized an omission of historic LGBTQ sites in the nation’s records, and the organization made a grant to the National Park Service to commission a first-of-its-kind LGBTQ Theme Study, which was published in 2016. It was a landmark project that represented major progress for the LGBTQ community in having our contributions included in the broader American story.
The Blade took screenshots of the Theme Study site last week. This is how the study was described on the site: “LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History is a publication of the National Park Foundation for the National Park Service and funded by the Gill Foundation. Each chapter is written and peer-reviewed by experts in LGBTQ Studies. … During Pride Month in 2016, President Obama designated the Stonewall National Monument as the country’s first LGBTQ national monument. Today there are 10 LGBTQ sites designated as a National Historic Landmark or listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”
Removal of the theme study has raised concerns that future LGBTQ monuments and project work are dead in the water. The Blade reached out to the National Park Service last week for comment and received a curt response that the agency is implementing Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” as well as agency directives to end all DEI initiatives.
Marc Stein, director of OutHistory, a public history website that generates evidence-based LGBTQ research, issued a lengthy statement in response to the removal of the theme study.
“Our histories have been appropriated, censored, commodified, distorted, erased, falsified, marginalized, pathologized, rejected, silenced, and simplified,” Stein wrote. “… They think they can erase trans and queer people from history, remove trans women of color from the history of Stonewall, pretend that LGBTQ+ people did not exist, did not struggle, did not fight, did not suffer, did not survive, did not thrive. If they think any of this, they have never experienced or witnessed our perseverance, our rage, our resilience, our joy.”
Washington Blade courtesy of the National LGBTQ Media Association.
