We're helping the National Park Service again this week with their rather shoddy recordkeeping about our transgender, intersex, and queer friends. Although, as we worked on restoring the deleted page on Parks and LGBTQ Heritage, we found that the leaders of the National Park Service were highly inconsistent when it came to their censorship.

While we won't ever truly know whether the keaders suffering from fascist amnesia at the National Park Service acted out of incompetence or deliberate censorship of the "good" letters in the LGBTQ+ acronym, what do know for sure know is they have erased plenty of gay, lesbian, and bisexual history from their records.

As we said before, expecting our dear friends at the National Park Service to be precise when it comes to erasing people from history is almost certainly asking too much. We know they are all dealing with a rabid muskrat infestation right now, so we respect that they have just a few other things to focus on.

That's why we went ahead and restored the Parks and LGBTQ Heritage to its original glory. Read on to learn about a transgender civil war veteran, the New York island that was a haven for rainbow people before Stonewall, and the history of America's first LGBTQ+ bookstore in Philadelphia, and all the fabulous places across our country where LGBTQ+ flourished with pride!

The National Park Service may feel like deleting this page would ultimately delete LGBTQ+ history. Yet there is simply too much history for them to erase at this point, and we definitely saw a fair number of mistakes as we combed through these records. A "transgender" missed here, an unaltered acronym there — seems that erasing people from history is a lot more work than they thought!

While they are wasting your taxpayer dollars on bigotry, the National Pride Service will just keep correcting their mistakes. For as long as takes.

Parks and LGBTQ Heritage

The NPS preserves a variety of places commemorating America's multi-faceted history. The NPS preserves cultural resources, such as buildings, landscapes, archeological sites, and museum collections. They serve as tangible evidence of our collective past.

Find a Park to find more of all Americans' stories.

Celebrate LGBTQ Heritage at Parks

Gateway National Recreation Area

One of the US' earliest and most prolific female photographers, Alice Austen shared Clear Comfort with her lifelong companion Gertrude Tate.

The webpage on Alice Austen hasn't been altered (yet). Give it time. Once the leaders of the National Park Service are reminded that lesbians aren't just fantasy fodder for the male gaze, they'll get rid of them too.

Vicksburg National Military Park

Albert Cashier was assigned female at birth and lived as a man. He fought in forty Civil War battles, including the Siege of Vicksburg.

Looks like the National Park Service forgot to delete the page on this transgender Civil War veteran. Or maybe they fired the person responsible for that part of the website before they realized they needed them to turn their bigoted dreams into reality. Go read the page on this incredible American before Albert's heroic service threatens enough fragile male egos for them to take the page down.

Stonewall National Monument

The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 was a major milestone in the quest for LGBTQ civil rights and provided momentum for a movement.

Thanks to a rather fascist decision by the leaders of the National Park Service, the most recent update the Stonewall National Monument website was completely borked. Somehow an agency dedicated to preserving "unimpaired the natural and cultural resources" decided that erasing transgender, intersex, and queer people from a monument that would have never existed without them was an a-okay thing to do! We're not keen on rewarding incompetence, so we're linking to our corrected version of the website instead. You're welcome!

President's Park

Butt-Millett Memorial Fountain honors two US officials who perished aboard the RMS Titanic. The two were close friends and possibly lovers.

Acknowledging gay and bisexual men seems to still be okay. No changes to this page so far. The current leaders of the National Park Service might eventually scrub this do to the inference that (gasp!) LGBTQ+ people can serve honorably in the military.

Governors Island National Monument

After serving in the US Army at Governors Island, Henry Gerber co-founded the Society for Human Rights to combat gay and lesbian oppression.

This page has been messed with due to the double sin of using the dreaded "T" in an acronym and possibly because forming a group called the Society for Human Rights was just too "woke" for the people in charge of the National Park Service right now. We're going to link to Wayback Machine version instead for that reason.

All though the National Park service deleted the "T" from the acronym in the title, their hacky methods managed to miss the dreaded "transgender" word in the last sentence of the page. We take comfort in knowing that Find-and-Replace fascism is about as effective as recollecting dandelion seeds on a windy day. They may try to erase all mentions of transgender folks but they WON'T get them all.

Anza National Historic Trail

In the Southwest, two-spirits were respected and entrusted with sacred roles such as being healers, matchmakers, storytellers, or prophets.

Read about these Additional Parks with LGBTQ Heritage

Alaska National Park Service

Created by the Alaska National Park Service, this video series recognizes, celebrates, and honors the rich diversity of the US, including the LGBTQ community. Employees share stories of their own early struggles as well as encouragement for others.

For some reason, the censors at the National Park Service removed the whole Pride video series rather than stripping the Ts and Qs (and the far-too-silent Is) from the webpage. Perhaps it was because there were videos on the page and their minds simply fritzed out at the prospect of having to do ACTUAL work rather than relying on find and replace.

Unfortunately, it looks like the video series, which is called "Pride Strength, Courage, and Diversity in the National Park Service in Alaska" was not completely preserved by the Wayback Machine. As awesome as the Internet Archive is, it can be really hit or miss when it comes to videos. Fortunately, it looks like one of the project participants shared copies of the video on her own personal YouTube channel. Here are the links to all three parts of the video series:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

We'll add this page to our list of pages to restore because Alaskans enough challenges to deal with right now between paying tariffs and higher shipping costs, climate change, and cruise boat tourists stupidly trying to get selfies with grizzly bears. The last things folks like that need is a bunch of preppy fascists with spray tans lecturing them about how accepting trans, intersex, and queer neighbors is too "woke."

Golden Gate National Recreation Area

During WWII, rejection from military service based on sexuality began to make headlines. LGBTQ veterans rallied to overcome these obstacles and launch LGBTQ rights movements in San Francisco and nationwide.

The military veterans page here got the LGB treatment as well. When we say "LGB treatment" out loud, it kind of sounds like a drug a black market plastic surgeon would offer you. The side effects would probably include numbness, diarrhea, and a sudden appreciation for Fox News.

Anyway, there's something a bit strange with how the Wayback Machine has archived this article. The sub-articles aren't being listed for some reason. If there's one group of people who we should be doubly proud of as Americans it's our LGBTQ+ military veterans. We'll definitely add this page to our restoration list and give it the celebration it truly deserves.

Fire Island National Seashore

From Oscar Wilde’s visit to the island in 1882, to the steady development of Cherry Grove as “America's First Gay and Lesbian Town,” Fire Island has long been a home and haven to LGBTQ visitors and residents alike.

If you somehow are still not convinced that the National Park Service is sweeping up the Ls, Gs, and Bs in their campaign to erase Ts and Qs, then the removal of this Fire Island LGBTQ Heritage page should hopefully show how wrong that thinking is. Other than the TQs in the abbreviations as well as one "transgender" and one "queer", all the people mentioned on this page were gay, lesbian, or had an unknown orientation. So if you're under the delusion that the current leadership at the National Park service cares one wit about the differences between orientations, we'd like to kindly suggest you do a hard reset on your expectations. Because if they are this terribly inconsistent when it comes to censoring some websites, they're not suddenly going to become more precise. That's not how fascism works.

This deleted page is pretty short, so we're going to go ahead and include the original copy here.

Fire Island's LGBTQ Heritage

From Oscar Wilde’s visit to the island in 1882, to the steady development of Cherry Grove as “America's First Gay and Lesbian Town,” Fire Island has long been a home and haven to LGBTQ visitors and residents alike.

Owing its development to the island’s relative isolation, its proximity to New York City, and to the efforts of early renters and homeowners, Fire Island's LGBTQ community became a trailblazing force across America. Long before the Stonewall Riots set the movement for Gay Liberation into motion, Fire Island provided an important enclave to residents and visitors at a time when almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) person was illegal in the United States. Fire Island towns such as Cherry Grove, and later Fire Island Pines, were among the few places where LGBTQ people could congregate and express themselves openly.

For many, Fire Island was something of a cultural laboratory. Free to be themselves, early LGBTQ residents and visitors experimented with theatre and art in ways that would actively shape and define LGBTQ culture for decades to come.

Did you know there are two sites on Fire Island listed on the National Register of Historic Places in part because of their role in LGBT history?

The Carrington House

Tucked away on the small tract of National Seashore land which separates Cherry Grove from Fire Island Pines is the Carrington House, a beach bungalow situated near Fire Island Pines. Built in 1909 as a summer home by Frederick Marquet, the cottage is associated with the earliest wave of development of Fire Island as a popular recreational destination. It’s a prime example of the kind of unique architecture that has come to define many of Fire Island’s communities. The site also includes a smaller guest house composed of two outbuildings purchased from the abandoned Lone Hill Lifesaving station.

The Carrington House’s LGBT connection likely begins with its purchase by Frank Carrington in 1927. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Frank Carrington expanded the house, and often invited guests to stay on the secluded maritime property. He was a prominent theater director and patron of the arts with a large circle of acquaintances who helped to establish the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, an influential organization which had a significant impact on the development of the small beach town.

Though it is unknown whether or not Frank Carrington would have identified as LGBTQ, many of his guests were well-known members of the LGBTQ community. Perhaps most famously, Truman Capote spent a summer in Carrington's guest house with his partner, Jack Dunphy, where he is said to have completed his most famous novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Frank Carrington was one of many influential residents of the island who, in its early days, helped to draw artists, performers, publishers, and other prominent New York City socialites to the isolated island paradise. Through their web of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, these residents and renters helped to establish Cherry Grove's reputation as an artistic community, and one that was tolerant, if not always friendly, to LGBTQ living.

This summer the Carrington Guest House will be undergoing renovations. Our hope is to have the Guest House fully restored to its original glory so that we may begin hosting a variety of community programs which include the layered LGBTQ history of the site, as well as of Cherry Grove, and Fire Island Pines.

(This copy is from 2021, so we really hope those renovations happened before the new National Park Service leaders rolled into town.)

The Cherry Grove Community House and Theater

At the heart of Cherry Grove stands the Cherry Grove Community House and Theater, the second of two sites on Fire Island listed on the National Register of Historic Places in part because of the role they played in LGBT history.

The Cherry Grove Community House is exceptionally significant for the enormous role it played in shaping what gradually evolved into America's First Gay and Lesbian Town. The building itself was originally constructed on Long Island and later floated across the Great South Bay to serve as the community house for the Cherry Grove Property Owners Association, Inc., which organized in 1944 to serve this small beach colony's civic needs. When a small stage was added in 1948 it also became home to the newly incorporated Arts Project of Cherry Grove.

Previously we talked a bit about Frank Carrington and the Arts Project of Cherry Grove. From its earliest days it would have a massive influence on the wider culture of Cherry Grove and Fire Island. With the overwhelming popularity of theatre as a focal point for culture and entertainment in the United States, the Arts Project of Cherry Grove was uniquely positioned to bridge the divides between bohemian renters and local homeowners.

As organizations, the Cherry Grove Property Owners Association and Cherry Grove Arts Projects profoundly influenced the community's development, facilitating the gradual social acceptance, self-affirmation, and integration of its gay and lesbian residents into Cherry Grove's governing affairs and civic life. This integration of LGBTQ residents into daily life and events at its community house afforded Cherry Grove a singular status; it became the one of the first and, for many years, the only gay and lesbian influenced geography in the United States.

Its metamorphosis played out against turbulent social and political upheavals – our nation's response to the pre- and early days of the homosexual liberation movement. The 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn, which is largely credited as the turning point in the gay civil rights movement, has been documented by numerous scholars. The nomination of the Cherry Grove Community House and Theatre to the Register of Historic Places is especially significant because it offers the rare opportunity to document an entire LGBTQ community in the pre-Stonewall era.

Independence National Historical Park

From sit-ins drawing attention to gender non-conforming discrimination to one of the country's first LGBTQ bookstores, Philadelphia's LGBTQ history follows the city's rich tradition of protest and activism.

Y'all. They took down the Philadelphia LGBTQ Heritage page and the Philadelphia LGBTQ Heritage Initiative page. We're not sure if the leaders of the National Park Service know who they're dealing with here. Because people from Philly riot and burn things when they are HAPPY. Also, the last time people in the city of Philadelphia got well and truly pissed off, we wound up with well, America. If the current leaders of the National Park Service really want to duke it out with the city who created Gritty, we'll make the popcorn.

Before that happens though, here is all the material from the deleted Philadelphia LGBTQ Heritage page. We'll add the Heritage Initiave page to our to-do list.

Philadelphia's Heritage of LGBTQ Activism

Philadelphia's history of protest and activism is exceptional. From American colonists declaring independence from Great Britain, to abolitionists fighting against slavery, to women's suffragists demanding voting rights, to civil rights activists calling for equality, the city has a deep history of social and political conflict and engagement.

In the future, the Philadelphia LGBTQ Heritage Initiative will offer more detailed histories. In the meantime, here is a brief overview.

Philadelphia's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) history follows this rich tradition of protest and action. A few highlights include:

Reminder Days
These were held annually at Independence Hall on July 4 from 1965 through 1969. Protesters gathered in front of Independence Hall to demand the public take notice of the discrimination that gay and lesbian American citizens endured -- that not all Americans enjoyed the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. These protests were organized by an alliance of homophile organizations, including the New York City and Washington, DC Mattachine Societies, the Janus Society of Philadelphia, and New York City's Daughters of Bilitis. As a collective, they were known as the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO). Organizers insisted on a strict dress code for participants, including jackets and ties for men and dresses for women; the goal was to present gays and lesbians as both "presentable" and "employable." Veteran activists at the first Annual Reminder included Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings, and Kay Tobin.

The Annual Reminders helped move gay and lesbian civil rights into the public consciousness and helped provide structure and organization for the ongoing LGBTQ Civil Rights movement. After the Stonewall Uprising in June of 1969, the organizers of the Annual Reminders discontinued the annual pickets. Instead, they focused their attention to the Christopher Street Liberation Day held on June 28, 1970 to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Since then, June is traditionally the month of LGBTQ Pride celebrations.

Dewey's Sit-in
On April 25, 1965, a large number of black and white lesbian, transgender, and gay people took part in a Sit-In at Dewey's. The protest was a response to the restaurant denying service to "homosexuals and persons wearing non-conformist clothing." Police arrested three people refusing to leave the diner and over the next week a leaflet campaign and a second sit-in was staged.

St. Mary's Church of Hamilton Village
When there were few meeting spaces outside of bars for lesbians to congregate, St. Mary's Church of Hamilton Village offered dances and a safe space for women to socialize.

Giovanni's Room
One of the oldest surviving LGBT bookstores in the nation. Opened in the early 1970s, Giovanni's room became a space where people could learn both about gay and lesbian culture and learn about themselves. The bookstore provided a support network and during the AIDS epidemic provided information about how to care for people with the disease.

From sit-ins at Dewey's, drawing attention to non-gender conforming discrimination, to Sisters, a lesbian bar on Chancellor Street, to Giovanni's Room, one of the country's first LGBTQ bookstores, Philadelphia has a rich and diverse history.

Both the extraordinary events and daily lives of people in Philadelphia have helped shape modern LGBTQ history. Today, few places in Philadelphia are recognized or preserved for their LGBTQ history and contributions to American life and culture.

Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site

There have been LGBTQ members of the Longfellow family as long as there have been Longfellows. Family members' personal papers give insight into these relationships.

Seems the folks who are removing the Ts and Qs at the National Park Service were a little less lazy when it came to reworking the page for the Longfellow House. They put actual effort into rewriting this page rather than just doing a hack job with find and replace. We'll have to dedicate a whole post to covering this revision because it is unfortunately some finely crafted erasure. It disturbs us though that they might have at least ONE competent censor on their staff.

National AIDS Memorial Grove

A place of beauty, serenity, and local and national prominence, the Memorial Grove gives a sense of honor and a home in our national landscape for the millions of lives touched by AIDS.

They didn't delete the memorial page but they did pull that LGB nonsense again. Fortunately the webpage for the memorial itself is not under their control and so that page is currently nonsense-free. Here is what the page should look like on the National Park Service website.

LGBTQ Memorials: National AIDS Memorial Grove, San Francisco, CA

This National Memorial began as a community effort to recognize the devastating loss of life from the AIDS epidemic, and an effort to create space for remembrance and grieving. Located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the Grove was restored from a state of disuse through the combined efforts of public and private groups and was designated as our National AIDS Memorial in 1996. A place of beauty, serenity, and local and national prominence, the Memorial Grove gives a sense of honor and a home in our national landscape for the millions of lives touched by AIDS.

Valley Forge National Historical Park

The statue of General von Steuben honors the Prussian-born Revolutionary War general who has recently been embraced as the “gay man who saved the American Revolution."

Proving once again how inconsistent people suffering from fascist amnesia are, the National Park Service has gone ahead and deleted General von Steuben. Considering how we're treating supposed European allies right now, this sort of behavior isn't that terribly surprising. Note, however, that they are now cool with deleting gay men as well. Fascist scope creep at its finest.

There is a lot of deleted info on this German general who helped America become America, so we're going to have to dedicate a separate post to the General as well.

Mammoth Cave National Park

The first woman to take a series of photographs in Mammoth Cave, Frances Benjamin Johnston was no stranger to journalism or the support of women who walked on the edges of traditional female roles. She later opened a photographic studio with her partner, Mattie Edwards Hewitt, in New York.

Lesbians are still cool apparently. Surely that has nothing to do with the male gaze at all! This page on Frances Benjamin Johnston wasn't altered as far as we can tell.

Boston National Historical Park

Boston’s LGBTQ community booked Faneuil Hall for its first Gay and Lesbian Town Meeting in 1977. The meetings deliberately imitated the old Boston town meeting as a nod to the revolutionary era and a symbol of the LGBTQ movement’s legitimacy in the history of American political protest.

Gays and lesbians are officially not cool again. Because the National Park Service just up and deleted this whole page too. Perhaps the sin was having so many "transgender" mentions in the text that they would have to do some (GASP) actual writing to make the page make sense. Shows how they really DON'T care what colors in the pride flag get erased if erasing transgender, intersex, and queer people demands even a blip of actual thought.

We'll give this page its own post as well because there is some wicked cool history in it.

Boston African American National Historic Site

Over the past 200 years, the Charles Street Meetinghouse has served a safe haven for some of Boston’s radical thinkers. By 1970, the Meetinghouse became synonymous with radical acceptance, hosting LGBTQ-friendly social events and welcoming the community.

There were only two tiny acts of erasure on the Charles Street Meetinghouse page. Rather than pull the LGB trick, whoever censored this page decided to use "gay, lesbian, and bisexual community" instead to replace LGBTQIA. Here are two sentences they changed.

Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail

Since 1958, the First Unitarian Society of Denver has engaged in causes related to social and racial justice, including LGBTQ civil rights.

Well, well, well! They deleted a CHURCH! Considering how much the current administration focuses on religious freedom we find this bit of censorship highly interesting. This church happens to be the first church in Denver to perform a same-sex wedding. Apparently the religious freedom card is only good for congregations that want permission to be mean to people they don't like.

This one is getting it's own post for sure because deleting churches is just a whole other level of awful.

Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site

Val-Kill has been an inclusive place since its creation in 1926. Learn more about the important contributions of LGBTQ people who made history at Eleanor Roosevelt's home.

Bisexuals and lesbians are no good if they have anything to do with the First Lady! The entire page covering Eleanor Roosevelt's romantic relationships is gone. We strongly suspect the current leadership of the National Park Service simply couldn't stomach the idea of a woman enjoying intimate relationships with multiple people who were not her husband. A First Lady certainly deserves a page of her own, so we will dedicated a post to restoring this content and celebrating Eleanor Roosevelt's many contributions to our nation.

Wayback Machine links and sources

As usual, we encourage you to explore the original source on your own and to doublecheck our work.

Parks and LGBTQ Heritage page: https://web.archive.org/web/20240930024811/https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/parks-and-lgbtq-heritage.htm

Thank you again to MadyCast for being the first to point out the erasures on many of these pages, including the tragic erasure of Eleanor Roosevelt's queer sexuality. You can see her article here: https://www.madycast.com/p/not-just-stonewall-analysis-shows