In February 2025, the National Park Service began erasing references to LGBTQ+ history from its website. Years of scholarship and public education disappeared in a matter of days. One of the most publicized outcomes of this effort was the removal of transgender history from the Stonewall National Monument website, a move that resulted in an egregiously inaccurate portrayal of this historical event. (You can read about my previous work with this site here.)
The impact of the censorship went far beyond that one monument, however. Throughout the thousands of pages of the NPS website, LGBTQ+ stories were removed or altered to erase the contributions of trans and queer identities. A significant amount of the research I have done for the National Park Service was targeted in this purge.
Among the potential victims of this censorship was the National Historic Landmark Theme Study on LGBTQ History, to which I had the honor of contributing a chapter. The park service removed all reference to this groundbreaking 2016 document, which in turn threatened to impede the ability of preservationists to identify and protect sites of LGBTQ+ historical significance. Luckily, though, editors at the digital history site OutHistory stepped up to prevent the loss of this important scholarship. They offered to host the theme study as an exhibit on the OutHistory site, and thanks to their willingness to help, the LGBTQ Theme Study remains accessible to the public. In addition, many of the contributors to the report (myself included) joined together in an open letter, also available on OutHistory, decrying this act of historical erasure by an entity of the United States Government.
