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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.
Why don't they just have the whole video be of footage from the Crystal Cathedral, if they're going to be showing footage of things which have absolutely nothing to do with the Lincoln Memorial.