The role that lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, and transgender individuals played in the history of the United States is to be explored by the National Park Service, which will launch the effort Tuesday with a panel discussion involving Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Park Service Director Jon Jarvis, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and the U.S. ambassador to Australia along with LGBT scholars and historians.
The goal of the initiative is to identify places and events associated with the story of LGBT Americans for inclusion in the parks and programs of the National Park Service.
The discussion Tuesday will explore ways to celebrate and interpret lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history in the context of broader American history, a release from the Interior Department said. Prior to the panel discussion, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Ambassador John Berry will deliver kick-off remarks.
The goals of the heritage initiative include: engaging scholars, preservationists and community members to identify, research, and tell the stories of LGBT associated properties; encouraging national parks, national heritage areas, and other affiliated areas to interpret LGBT stories associated with them; identifying, documenting, and nominating LGBT-associated sites as national historic landmarks; and increasing the number of listings of LGBT-associated properties in the National Register of Historic Places.
The history of Civil Rights underscores a large part of American experience. The National Park Service is proud to be a part of this continuing legacy of freedom and justice. Directed by Americans to steward and teach the nation’s history, the National Park Service connects and amplifies important national stories in cooperation with partner communities across the United States.
You can add your comments to this discussion at this website.
Comments
Quoting from the article above:
"[Former Yosemite Superintendent] Finley explains . . . 'You can’t roller-skate in the Sistine Chapel, nor should you.' Which is to say that adventure sports are banned in parks for cultural reasons."
So, if we're running a museum curatorship and religious-worship service that happens to utilize outdoor locations, I see no reason why the history of gays and lesbians should be excluded.
Wow. If this then that, to absudum.
Museum curation is one of several different disciplines within the NPS. It is far from the best funded, as much of it is behind the scenes and not as sexy as Old Faithful or Half Dome or the grizzlies in Denali.
If we are preserving and communicating the history of America then there is no reason to exclude the history of sexual minorities. It won't take one single bit of bikeable trail away from you. There is every probability that a goodly proportion of your bike riding buddies are within the GLBTQRSVP community anyhow.
Rick, you are scoring an own goal. I am saying, just as you are, that as long as there's a museum aspect to the NPS, "I see no reason why the history of gays and lesbians should be excluded." I have to quote myself because you can't possibly have read my post. And yes, I do have one FB friend who's a gay man and is a mountain biker. What I am also saying is that this issue brings into relief the larger problem that that's pretty what the NPS is: a museum service, combined with a religious movement. I believe that is not good. There I am sure we will disagree, if not on the facts, at least on the consequences of them.
Fine, fine. I just don't know how you leap from my "there is a museum aspect to the NPS" to your "NPS is a museum service". [emphasis added] I'm totally leaving alone your religious allusions.
Fair enough! I think our difference of opinion is that I think the NPS would like to treat all of its properties as museums and that's why it's huffy (no pun intended) about mountain bikers, kayakers, climbers, etc. Its preferred forms of recreation are contemplative and, one senses, ideally should be reverential . . . exhilaration has no place in its catalogue raisonné of permissible uses.
The article—which I encourage everyone to read—points out that the NPS has been thwarted in this desire, but not in a way that's good:
The gravamen (crux) of the article is this well-argued paragraph, which sums up a number of issues some of us have been raising in these discussions for a long time:
And I can certainly see how Grayson Schaeffer's opinion speaks to you. He is championing your favorite thingie.
By way of full disclosure, by the way, my wife is a museum curator working full time for the NPS. Since I'm retired and have nothing better to do than battle back at windmills, I kinda stick up for her career field when museums are bad mouthed.
Back to the topic of the thread, I've never seen an organization as diverse as the NPS, and I have no doubts that this mission to include sexual minorities in amongst the rest of the civil rights history the NPS preserves will be accomplished well.
12 billion dollar maintence backlog and this is thier new priority. This effort is fine with me as long as not one cent of NPS budget is spent on this. Maybe REI can fund it, Sally.