Gay footage will stay in Lincoln Memorial video ( 2003-12-26 10:22) (Agencies)
Footage of gay rights
demonstrations will not be removed from a Lincoln Memorial videotape, according
to spokespeople from the National Park Service and the Human Rights Campaign.
Earlier reports said the images would be removed.
Footage of gay rights demonstrations will not be removed from a videotape
shown at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C, according to spokespeople from
the National Park Service and the Human Rights Campaign. Earlier reports in
various news outlets said the gay images would be removed.
In a press release yesterday, Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (PEER), a government-watchdog group, said that because of
pressure from conservative groups, the National Park Service agreed to remove
from the tape all scenes depicting gay and abortion rights rallies. "The Park
Service leadership now caters exclusively to conservative Christian
fundamentalist groups," PEER executive director Jeff Ruch said in the release.
But today that story has changed. "We have been assured that they are redoing
the tape, but are not stripping out scenes of gay and lesbian events at the
Lincoln Memorial, because to do so would be historically inaccurate," said Winne
Stachelberg, political director at the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay
rights group. Stachelberg told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network that National
Park Service Chief of Public Affairs, David Barna, made those reassurances to
her this morning.
"It certainly sounds as if the park service is getting pressure from
right-wing extremists groups to drop images of the gay community and add other
images," Stachelberg added.
As part of its update, the National Park Service plans to add scenes
including rallies by the Promise Keepers, a fundamentalist Christian men's
group, and by pro-life groups to the video.
To do so, however, may not be historically accurate after all. Those rallies
did not occur at the Lincoln Memorial or even on the nearby Mall, said Bill
Line, a spokesperson for the National Park Service.
Line told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network that the pressure to replace gay
and pro-choice images with Christian and pro-life scenes comes from conservative
Kansas Republican congressman Todd Tiahrt.
In a letter to the National Park Service last February, Tiahrt objected to
the portions of the video that depict gays and a National Abortion Rights League
rally, Line said. Tiahrt is "in discussion" with the park service about adding
the new scenes, Line said.
The 8-minute video, on public display since 1995, depicts images of a wide
variety of events that took place at the Memorial, including black civil rights
marches and anti-war demonstrations. The footage of gay rights lasts about 13
seconds, and the pro-choice footage lasts about 16 seconds, Line said.
Congressman Tiahrt's spokesperson was unavailable for comment, having left on
a holiday vacation.
The changing video footage is part of a "very disturbing" series of events in
which conservative Christians are influencing National Park service policy, said
Ruch.
The National Park Service has been fighting a lengthy legal battle to
continue to display an 8-foot cross in California's Mohave National Preserve,
and has reinstalled plaques with Biblical verses along the rim of the Grand
Canyon.
They have also endorsed the sale at Park Service bookstores of a creationist
text, "The Grand Canyon: A Different View," which argues that, despite
geological evidence to the contrary, the canyon was "created" several thousand
years ago.
"The pattern is to accommodate Christian fundamentalist demands to display
religious objects or remove historical objects they find offensive," Ruch
said.
