National Pride Service Report March 10-16

The National Pride Service took a deep dive look at the Parks and LGBTQ Heritage Page that was removed from the National Park Service website. We assisted the National Park Service by restoring the page and providing commentary on their rather poor attempts to update vital federal records. If there were letter grades for censorship, we'd give the National Park Service a big, red, "F" along with a note to "drop the course while you still can."

Here is the restored version of the page along with our notes and thoughts about what was changed:

Deleting the Parks and LGBTQ Heritage page does NOT delete LGBTQ+ history

The National Park Service thinks deleting a webpage means deleting LGBTQ heritage. We disagree!

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While many of the pages connected to the Parks and LGBTQ heritage page were given a "find and erase" treatment that suggests haphazard use of AI or a basic keyword search, others were deleted without attempting any sort of editing or modification. This approach is like a child trying to clean their room by shoving all the mess in a closet and lighting it on fire. No thought or precision was put into updating these records. While that might ultimately be the result of incompetence or people dragging their feet and trying to slow down the erasure of important records, these actions still show that the history of all marginalized Americans is currently very vulnerable.

One of our rangers shared their thoughts on that vulnerability in an essay reflecting on how lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans were affected by these unfortunate record updates just as much as transgender, intersex, and queer Americans. We encourage you to read this essay and share it with others to encourage anyone who might think these efforts to revise history won't ultimately target them to think a little more deeply about it.

Ls, Gs, and Bs: The US government is deleting your history too

The Trump administration is coming after all of us, no matter what part of the rainbow we identify with.

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We also encouraged you to take a break from screens this week in our Ranger-led activity. Screens are useful tools but can also lead to distraction, inaction, and eye strain. So, we put together some tips to help you escape and give yourself a mini screen-free retreat.

Ranger-led activity: Take a screen break

This Ranger-led activity is called “Take a screen break”. This activity can be done by yourself or with friends. You can do as much or as little of this exercise as you want to. Resilience Exercise Troubling times combined with modern technology can easily suck you into a non-stop cycle

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Reading and resources

Here are some other interesting things we saw and shared recently:

• A federal worker took a stand via reply-all: Karen Ortiz is a hero. She couldn't stop cases representing transgender workers from being dismissed, but she made it impossible for her agency's new leaders to do so comfortably or quietly by emailing her WHOLE agency to say everyone should resist. We hope others are inspired by her courage.
• The Supreme Court took a case on conversion therapy: This is a worrying development that not only affects LGBTQ+ youth but may also affect the ability of states to regulate medical treatment in unfortunate ways.
• The Pentagon is preparing to cull records related to DEI: If you want proof of how stupid the LGBTQ+ history purge is getting, look no further. Images of the Enola Gay, a plane used to drop NUKES, have been marked for deletion. Gay people drop shade, not bombs. You think the world's greatest military minds would know that.
• Rep. Sarah McBride from Delaware spoke up: The first transgender representative of Congress demonstrated she has here priorities straight by saying, “I wish that they would spend even a fraction of the time that they spend thinking about me, thinking about how to lower the costs for American families." She's right! Our leaders shouldn't be wasting time on petty bullying and bigotry. She is definitely an American to be PROUD of this week!
• Historians launch at-risk history project: The Organization of American Historians is just as concerned as we are about the sudden and haphazard revisions being made to federal records. They have launched a project aiming to identify at-risk historical resources and records. We're so glad they're taking this on!

That's all for this report! If you want to get more frequent updates from your National Pride Service, follow us on Bluesky or Mastodon.

Our next report may come a little later than usual due to ranger availability. Unlike that other unofficial agency run by a man who thinks government efficiency means playing video games at work, we believe in time off and healthy sleep schedule. So, our report cadence may change from time to time.

Thank you for reading!