National Parks

LGBTQ+ places the government doesn't want you to know about

The LGBTQ+ Heritage Featured Places page is making a comeback.

The Friend's Home (Jemima Wilkinson House) - Courtesy National Register of Historic Places

Hello America! We're bringing back a page that the federal government would prefer you never knew existed. That would be the LGBTQ+ Heritage Featured Places page of the National Park Service webpage.

We guess the current leaders at the National Park Service would rather have you suffer through tourist traps that overcharge for "gold" panning or ethnically questionable souvenirs than visit a place that actually acknowledges LGBTQ+ people exist. Also, because apparently it was just too hard to nix things related to the Ts and Qs, they went ahead and deleted a bunch of things referring to the Ls, Gs, and Bs too. Gotta love fascist scope creep!

Unlike our sister agency, we have NO qualms about helping you plan a rainbow-themed road trip. So here is the original content for the LGBTQ+ Heritage Featured Places place along with a little fun commentary from us.

LGBTQ+ Heritage Featured Places

Explore Featured Places

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.

Learn how the Park Service commemorates and preserves LGBTQ heritage through the featured content below.

Parks and LGBTQ Heritage

A park rangers flat hat sits atop a sandy dune with an LGBTQ pride flag and Transgender pride flag next to it. NPS/Sucena

This article contains a lot of great info and links in it about LGBTQ heritage in America. Rather than stuffing all of this great content into this post, we're going to give this article a post of it's own so that all of the glorious colors in this beautiful rainbow of an article can be properly appreciated. We'll link to it here when it's been published.

The Friend's Home (Jemima Wilkinson)

A black and white photograph of a large three story home with white siding and several pine trees in the front yard. — The Friend's Home (Jemima Wilkinson House) - Courtesy National Register of Historic Places

Check out the residence of the Public Universal Friend, a genderless American preacher.

The page for The Friend's Home has also been deleted because apparently the idea of remembering someone who declared themselves a genderless Public Universal Friend and traveled the country preaching about love and acceptance is too scandalous for the National Park Service. We find that interesting considering how many leaders in the current administration claim to be followers of another religious person whose name rhymes with cheezus. We're not as prudish and we love a good scandal, so here's everything the deleted page had on the Public Universal Friend.

Quick Facts

Location: Jerusalem, NY

Significance: residence of the Public Universal Friend, American preacher who defied binary gender norms

Designation: National Register of Historic Places

OPEN TO PUBLIC: No

The Friend’s Home was the residence of the Public Universal Friend, an American preacher. Born Jemima Wilkinson in 1752 into a prominent Quaker family, the Friend underwent a religious transformation during a serious illness at the age of 23. Upon recovering, the Friend renounced the name and pronouns of Jemima Wilkinson. The Friend claimed that Jemima had died, and that God had reanimated her body with a new, genderless spirit named the “Public Universal Friend.”

The Friend took up preaching, traveling throughout the Northeast and gathering followers into a community known as the Society of Universal Friends. The group’s theology largely resembled Quaker teachings. The gender presentation of the Friend, however, distinguished the Society and attracted considerable public attention. The preacher dressed in an androgynous or masculine style, often wearing long black robes and a broad-brimmed hat. The Friend ignored or scolded anyone who used the name “Jemima Wilkinson.”

Most followers referred to the preacher as “the Friend” or with the abbreviation “P.U.F.” Many of them used the pronouns “he” and “him” to address the Friend. But other observers noted that the Friend seemed to be “neither man nor woman.” Historians have written about the Friend’s gender differently across time. Some have pointed out that society frowned on public leadership roles for women. They describe the Friend as a woman who downplayed her femininity to preach. Other writers have characterized the Friend as transgender or nonbinary. While the Friend did not leave any writings specifically reflecting on gender identity, historians like Paul Moyer have argued that the preacher's gender presentation was closely tied to the experience of religious transformation. According to Moyer, the Friend's "holy persona blurred the very distinction between male and female."[1]

In the early 1790s, the group established a colony in western New York State, near the town now known as Jerusalem. A Federal style house served as the center of the group’s religious and agricultural activities. In 1819, the Public Universal Friend died after years of declining health. Members of the Society of Universal Friends initially buried the Friend’s body in the basement of the house. They later moved it to an unmarked location on the property. After the Friend’s death, the Society gradually disbanded.

The Friend’s Home is also known as the Jemima Wilkinson House. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 24, 1994. The house and outbuildings sit on hills overlooking the Guyanoga Valley and Keuka Lake. The property is significant for its association with the Friend. It is also a distinctive example of Federal style residential architecture of the Finger Lakes region.

Notes and Bibliography

[1] Moyer, The Public Universal Friend, 8-9.

Moyer, Paul B. The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.
"Jemima Wilkinson House." NPS.gov (archived). https://web.archive.org/web/20170615182223/https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/pwwmh/ny7.htm
National Register of Historic Places, Jemima Wilkinson House, Jerusalem, Yates County, New York, NR #94000965, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75315619.
Schmidt, Samantha. "A genderless prophet drew hundreds of followers long before the age of nonbinary pronouns." Washington Post, Jan. 5, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/05/long-before-theythem-pronouns-genderless-prophet-drew-hundreds-followers/.
Springate, Megan, ed. LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History. Washington, DC: National Park Foundation, 2016.
Wisbey, Herbert A., Jr. Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.

Places of Latino LGBTQ Gathering Spaces

MAESTRAPEACE, Lapidge Street façade, murals on The San Francisco Women's Building, 18th and Valencia Street — MAESTRAPEACE, Lapidge Street façade, mural on The San Francisco Women's Building, 18th and Valencia Street - Juana Alicia, Edythe Boone, Miranda Bergman, Susan Cervantes, Meera Desai, Yvonne Littleton and Irene Perez, © 1994, 2000, 2010. All rights reserved. Mural images courtesy of the artists.

Discover 6 historic places that celebrate Latino LGBTQ visibility and community in the US.

This article on historic Latino LGBTQ places was also deleted because the current leaders of the National Park Service are apparently allergic to racial diversity too. More of that fascist scope creep! We can't really do this article justice either by cramming it into this post, so we're going to give it a post of it's own and link it here when we do.

Discover Additional Places with LGBTQ Heritage

The National Park Service cares for America's more than 400 national parks…and works in almost every one of her 3,141 counties. We are proud that tribes, local governments, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individual citizens ask for our help in revitalizing their communities, preserving local history, celebrating local heritage, and creating close to home opportunities for kids and families to get outside, be active, and have fun. Find a few selected important places outside the parks here and explore the links for more. Then explore what you can do to share your own stories and the places that matter to you.

Many places have an LGBTQ history, but it is not mentioned in their interpretations. For those sites, visit the LGBTQ America HistoryPin project.

Mapping these places helps to make this heritage more visible.

The HistoryPin project is a really cool resource that can help you find LGBTQ+ history and other historical places near you. If there's something they missed, you can also add your own pin. We suspect that the current leaders of the National Park Service removed this link because they're not keen on citizens participating in things. You know, things like voting and democracy.