 And again, thank you all for being here. It's cold today. Welcome to the San Francisco Summer. Got my scarf on. And we are in for a treat today because we have a nature boost. And we love our partners in the nature world. They are soulmates of the natural world. Thank you. Thank you. I will share some links with you from today's event and library resources. And I'm just going to give a quick announcement of library news and some upcoming events that we have going on. It is summer stride and we are well into it. I can't even believe it's going to be July next week. We have lots of events. Summer stride is not just for kids. It's for all ages. And you know, you're going to want to get that iconic San Francisco Public Library tote bag with that beautiful artwork you see there from Bay Area's own Kelani Juanita. And so do your 20 hours reading, fill out your tracker or do it online and we'll put links in there for you. And come get your tote bag in one of our many locations that are now opening up for everybody. We are so excited. So lots of browse and bounce locations as well as SFPL to go locations and more coming on very soon. We want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Ohlone Tribal people and acknowledge the many Romitish Ohlone Tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards in the lands on which we reside. The library is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations with whom we live together. We encourage you to learn more about first person culture and land rights and that document link has a link to a great reading and resource list. And I encourage you to check out our YouTube channel for all sorts of great programs we've had on the topics of first persons. And just some quick updates on upcoming programs this weekend. We have our friends from the California native plant society and they're gonna be talking about planting for children growing a garden that encourages outside exploration in your garden for your young ones. And then Saturday, I mean, Sunday, sorry, Sunday 11 a.m. I'm super excited about this. On top of June being Pride Month, it is also Black History Appreciation Month, Music Appreciation Month. So our community member whose father was a very famous photographer here in San Francisco and shot a lot of the era of Harlem of the West era on the Fillmore and the Jazz era. She will be presenting a presentation on Black music and those amazing musicians born and raised in San Francisco and Bay Area. So it's gonna be a good one. Please come out 11 a.m. Sunday. Every Tuesday, June, July and August we'll have an author talk this Tuesday. Alina Adams, who is a Lowell graduate. So she's was local. Big events, so please come on out and attend our virtual events. And we're excited about all the things we have for summer and sign up for Summer Stride. So today is gonna be a really special event and these are so amazing. And I can't wait to hear all of these folks talk and their stories. And we have the National Park Service and Golden Gate National Park Conservancy discussing the complex connections between LGBTQ plus community and the military in the Bay Area. And I'm gonna turn it over now and there will be time for Q and A so you can use the Q and A function as well as put your questions in the chat in YouTube and welcome YouTube friends. And I'm gonna turn it over now to Ranger Ector Valero. And I'm gonna stop sharing. The door, it's all you. Hi folks, welcome. We are so excited to be offering you today a program known as Protect and Serve the Intertwined Histories of the Military in the Bay Area LGBTQ community. And today we have some really special guests. Our presentation for today, it's gonna be about 15 minutes at first. We're gonna have, or we'll be having starting with a 15 minute presentation by Stephanie Weinstein at Park Ranger at a Golden Gate National Recreation Area specifically Mirwitz National Monument. Stephanie will be setting kind of the historical context that we'll be working with today, understanding the connections between the military here in the Bay Area and the LGBTQ community as well. And then after that, after that initial 15 minute presentation, we're gonna spend the rest of our time on a panel with some really amazing guests, specifically Megan Springgate, the editor of the National Park Service LGBTQ Heritage Theme Study, as well as the director of engagement for the America 250 Foundation. Nian Alamia Boyd, a professor of women and gender studies at San Francisco State University, as well as the author of Wide Open Town, which was a really amazing but critical for understanding the LGBTQ history here in San Francisco. And Mike Gallant as well will be joining us at Park Ranger, National Park Service Ranger, who's done a lot of interesting work with the public in terms of LGBTQ history at the Rosie the Riveter, World War II Home Front National Historic Park, as well as Golden Gate National Recreation Area. And we have two moderators. So myself, I'm the Education Program Manager over at Fort Point with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area as well. And Ryan White from the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is joining us as well to be a moderator today. So we're really excited and I'm gonna throw it over to Stephanie for her 15 minute presentation before we get started with our lovely panelists. Hi all, thank you so much, Hector. I'm gonna go and get my presentation up that you all can see. Okay, there we go. So we wanted to start like Hector said by giving some context around the connected histories of the military and the LGBTQ plus community in San Francisco. Of course, this brief 15 minutes that I have to share with you, I won't be able to cover the whole history of the military and this area or the LGBTQ plus community in this area, but the hope is to provide some context and some background information. To start us off, I wanted to begin by talking about some language. Language in terms for how people identify are constantly changing. The use of the word queer is empowering for some and hurtful for others. We'll do our best to be respectful of the individuals we're recognizing today and work to only define them the way they would want to be defined or have to find themselves. The Bay Area has a rich LGBTQ plus history as well as an expansive military history. The Golden Gate National Recreation Area has many former military sites. From the Presidio to the Marin Headlands, these sites were active in World War II and beyond. Over the 45 months of World War II, over a million military personnel left for the Pacific from the San Francisco Port of Embarkation. This accounts for two thirds of all the troop that went to the Pacific. World War II and the military as a whole had a remarkable impact on the world at large as well as specific impacts on San Francisco's communities. These former military sites offer a glimpse into how San Francisco's LGBTQ plus community developed. Margaret Chung was incredibly influential in World War II era San Francisco. Margaret Chung was the first Chinese-American woman to get a medical degree. She dressed in men's clothing and openly lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow described flirtation and romance between the pair in her journal. When World War II began, Margaret Chung recruited many pilots and created the famous unit, the Flying Tigers. By the end of the war, Margaret Chung had created a unit of more than 15,000 aviators. She helped create the women accepted for volunteer emergency services reserve corps for the women in the Navy, the long name. She applied to join the corps herself, but the military rejected her because of her race and suspected sexuality. She set up her experience with men in the military. I used to be a lady-like and differential, but found it didn't pay. Everywhere I was stepped on. Now I treat them rough, they lap it up. The military increased its practice of sexuality screening during the Second World War. When trying to enter the military, people wanting to enlist would be asked about their sexual history. Many LGBTQ plus people lied about their sexuality and enlisted. If anyone discovered their sexuality while they served, they were most often discharged. This could be with a blue discharge or a dishonorable discharge. These discharges affected their benefits as veterans. It could also impact their employment options after the war. Jose Seria was born and raised in San Francisco. He enlisted to help fight in World War II. After his service, he wanted to be a teacher, but was not able to find a position because of his sexuality. World War II and the military increased discrimination towards LGBTQ plus people, but it also helped to create an LGBTQ plus community. People from all over the country were being deployed from big port cities. Words like homosexual were new to people's vocabulary and it brought a description to what many people were feeling about themselves. People labeled as homosexual on their blue discharges often decided to stay in the city rather than be chastised in their hometowns. The Arms Forces Disciplinary Control Board did not want their military personnel visiting any establishment that had connections to homosexual activities and would work with local authorities to try to close these bars. LGBTQ plus institutions were constantly rated by the police. Bars like the Black Cat Cafe were targeted by the Joint Army Navy Disciplinary Control Board. The Black Cat Cafe had a predominantly LGBTQ plus patronage and Jose Seria performed politically charged drag shows and operas there. Seria was mad about the discrimination his community was facing. He decided to run for office and became the first openly gay person to run for public office in 1961. He refused to be in the closet. Seria said, I wanted to prove that a gay person had the right to run for public office that we all had that right. He did not win the election but he came ninth out of 30 candidates. After years of legal battles the Armed Forces and police eventually succeeded in closing the Black Cat Cafe in 1963. Because of the militaries and local authorities' attempts to create unsafe environments for LGBTQ plus people and bars people started to look for other ways to create community. In 1955 a Filipino American woman named Rosalie Bamberger and her partner Rosemary had an idea for a lesbian social club. Four couples met at their home on September 21st, 1955. They became a group called the Daughters of Boletus or DOB for short. The group started the small club but lesbian couple Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon who are pictured here, they pushed the organization further. They made the group a safe place for lesbians in San Francisco to gather and grounded the organization in activism. DOB grew into a national network of activist organizations with local chapters all over the country. DOB faced a lot of pushback, especially from local authorities and even the CIA and the FBI. Myron and Lyon also created one of the first lesbian puroticles called the latter. In 1966 the vice president of DOB's New York chapter 24 year old Ernestine Xen appeared on the cover of the latter. Ernestine Xen pushed DOB to become more politically engaged. She also saw the importance of unity amongst gay men and women, transgender individuals and people of color. Xen moved to the Bay Area and joined black women organized for action. She was also the only black person and only woman in the 1965 picket in front of the White House. This was one of the first public demonstrations against LGBTQ plus discrimination that was created by Frank Kamining. The years after World War II were a time of incredible panic for the entire country. People were afraid of communism and built defenses like the Nike Missile Site and the Marine Helens in response. You can see an image of the missile site here. There was not just fear of attacks from foreign government but also fear of people from the communist party infiltrating the government. Starting in the 1950s, the federal government began firing everyone they thought was part of the LGBTQ plus community. This is now known as the lavender scare. Thousands of people lost their jobs such as Frank Kamining. He was fired because of his sexuality from the United States Army map service. He was barred from employment from any federal agency. Frank Kamining went on to protest his firing and discrimination of LGBTQ plus people in the US. Frank Kamining organized the 1965 picket in front of the White House that Ernestine Eckstein participated in. People like Frank Kamining, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon began making a network of LGBTQ groups across the country. The first ever nationwide large-gill LGBTQ plus protests was against the military ban on LGBTQ plus people. On arms forces day in 1966, people protested in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC and San Francisco. DOB helped organize the event. Del Martin said before the event, this is quite a daring adventure for us. Having no popular support and being somewhat hazardous if not disastrous to the individual who reveals himself. A common practice in the 1960s was something called clean sweeps. This was when police would do street cleanings or sweeps arresting LGBTQ people. An organization called Vanguard made up of young LGBTQ plus individuals in the tenderline, turned this discrimination on its head and spent the day cleaning up the streets of garbage. This demonstration was showing the positive impact that LGBTQ plus youth had on their neighborhoods. LGBTQ plus institutions were constantly rated by the police and threatened by the arms forces disciplinary control board. A group of six homophile organizations including the Daughters of Beletus and the Madishing Society, organized a fundraising event called the New Year's Ball on January 1st, 1965. Even with proper permits from the police, the police still harassed and arrested people at the event. This galvanized the LGBTQ plus people to stand up for their rights. Transgender individuals were the most susceptible to police violence. Many transgender women frequented a spot called the Compton cafeteria in San Francisco. It was a 24-hour establishment in the Tenderloin district. The owner of this establishment often called the police on his patience. After countless instances of police harassment, people decided to stand up for themselves on a night in 1966. This event is now known as the Compton cafeteria riots. This event was led by transgender women. Three years later, the Stonewall riots led by transgender women, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in New York City would spark a national movement for gay liberation. The Presidio was a military site started with Spanish colonization. Though the years had changed and it developed through the years. During World War II and the following Cold War, Vietnam War and Korean War, there were military offices, barracks, a hospital and more at the Presidio. In 1970, Gilbert Baker became a medic and lived at the Presidio, at the Army barracks. He fell in love with another medic there, but they needed to keep the relationship secret to avoid discharge. After their training was complete, his partner was stationed in Japan and Baker was stationed to stay in San Francisco. Eventually the pair lost contact and his partner moved home and remained closeted, but Baker could not live like that anymore. He came out to his family, was disowned and decided to stay in San Francisco. Gilbert Baker was an artist and Harvey Milk encouraged him to create a symbol for the LGBTQ plus community to be used during Pride, which at the time was called the Gay Freedom Day Parade. Baker created the Rainbow Pride flag in 1978. Rainbow flags have flown at every San Francisco Pride since and Gilbert Baker continued to be a powerful LGBTQ plus activist. People all over the Bay Area continued to be visible. Poets, writers and artists like Gilbert Baker, Pat Parker, El Skidlow and Barbara Cameron lived out and proud. One of Pat Parker's poems ends with this, fact is, blatant heterosexuals are all over the place and they want gay men and women to go hide in the closet. So to you straight folks, I say, sure, I'll go, if you'll go too, but I'm polite, so after you. I really like that quote. In the early 1980s, the HIV epidemic began. The loss this epidemic brought to the LGBTQ plus community, the United States and the world is insurmountable. When the HIV epidemic began, the military was still discharging individuals for their sexuality. In 1982, the Department of Defense doubled down on their stands and released an official policy that said homosexuality is incompatible with military service. Over the next decade, roughly 17,000 individuals were discharged every year on the basis of sexuality. The military banned anyone who tested positive for HIV from entering military service. A policy also existed that required medical confidentiality. People who were in the service and tested positive were not supposed to be discharged based on their results and their information was supposed to remain confidential, but more often than not, military medical professionals were able to get confessions of homosexuality after a positive test and discharge a patient on that accord. If the HIV positive person was able to stay in their position, their information was often leaked and the resulting harassment would force them many to leave. To this day, even with major advances in medicine, individuals who are HIV positive still cannot enter the military. They often cannot move up in ranks or be deemed fit for combat. Many service members are still denied promotions or let go since their superiors do not see possibilities for promotion based on their status. Over time, much of the Army bases in the Bay Area were no longer needed. With much community fight and support, Golden Gate National Recreation Area was created in 1972. Clyde Moroftig was a geologist who worked in Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Marin Headlands. In 1989, during his acceptance speech for his distinguished career award, he came out as gay. Military sites like the Presidio and Fort Baker were transferred to National Park Service in 1994 and 1995. Societal perceptions of LGBTQ plus people began to change. California passed the Marriage Equality Act in 2004. Bill Glyon and Delmarin were finally married after more than 60 years together. In 2010, President Obama repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. For the first time in military history, service members could not be discharged based on their sexuality. In 2016, the Stonewall Inn became a national monument, the first site in the National Park Service to be preserved solely for LGBTQ plus history. Now many World War II history sites in the Bay Area are part of the National Park Service. We are able to talk about the importance of LGBTQ plus history. Symbols and sites of the military that historically excluded LGBTQ plus people are now part of a National Park where federal employees can celebrate pride. We can now be part of uplifting the LGBTQ plus community and creating a new legacy for these sites. And now we're gonna move on to our panel. So I'm gonna throw it back over to Hector and Ryan. Thank you staff. That was a really lovely presentation and it's incredible how much you condensed into 15 minutes. We are gonna go ahead and get started with our panel discussion. Ryan and I will be taking turns doing questions. And so just to sort of get us started, I'd love to hear from our panel and just ask, start off with a question and really either any of you can start off either Mike, Megan, or Nan. What brings you to this panel and specifically what has gotten you interested in terms of the work of uncovering LGBTQ history and also sharing it with others? Awesome, okay. I'll go first. I'm Nan. I'm a historian, can you hear me? So I'm a historian and I have been doing LGBTQ plus or queer history for about 30 years. I've been writing on this topic and teaching on this topic and I'm here because my work has evolved from kind of history making that is writing historical narrative, specifically about queer history in San Francisco to thinking about historical methods that is how is history told? Like what are the methods that people use to write histories and tell stories about history, particularly queer history? What are queer history methods? Are there methods that themselves are queer meaning kind of non-normative? And what would it mean if that was the case? And then more recently I've been thinking about preservation and tourism and what happens when we mark places for historical preservation and what happens when those sites become commodities that has become important to the production of capital or profit, for the city, the state or private enterprise. So this panel is really cool because it does all these things. It's talking about historical narrative, historical methods, preservation and even tourism. So that's why I'm here. Thank you. Thanks, Dan. Sure, I'll go next. I'm Megan Springgate and I'm really glad to be here. I'm here to share the history and to share the complexities, maybe not specific to San Francisco, but to take those connections and give sort of how they connect to a larger national history. I edited the LGBTQ theme study for the National Park Foundation and the National Park Service. And yeah, my background is a historical archeologist and I have always been sort of engaging with folks about how history works, about how you find new evidence. In my case, the stuff comes out of the ground and then how that changes what we know and understand and can talk about at different sites. And so through the ebbs and flows of careers, I ended up doing this work. I came out in 1987. So to be asked by a federal agency to do this history was really moving to me because it was not that long before this process started that the government was actively discriminating against LGBTQ folks. So to be seen by the federal government was really emotional. So that really drew me to the work and to make sure that we did it as best as we could. It's not a complete all the history of all the things because there's just not enough room in one document for that, but hopefully it was a good start. And I'm now, as Hector said, Director of Engagement for the America 250 Foundation and we're working to help facilitate the largest and most inclusive commemoration in our nation's history for the 250th of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which is in 2026. And my job is to make sure that all the histories are included, all of them. Good, bad, indifferent, all of them. That's what makes America America. So. Thank you, Megan. So that leaves me. So just as a reminder, I'm Michael Ant. I'm a park interpreter with the National Park Service. I've worked for the NPS for about seven years. And for those of you that may not know, interpreters are the ones who talk to the public. We're the ones who give public programs, do research and try to take the amazing work that historians and scientists do and communicate it to the public. So I find myself on this panel. I'm the geologist, which is my backgrounds in geology. I worked a lot in big nature parks. And then in 2018, I did a season in the Presidio and developed an earthquake walk there, kind of started to understand really on the ground, the earth system in San Francisco. But I was also surrounded by a built environment in a much different way than I had been for the prior five years of my career, by all this military history and by all these human stories to a much greater degree. And so I started to wonder what would my life have looked like if I was in the Presidio 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago. And as we just heard in Stephanie's presentation, I couldn't be an openly queer federal employee for most of the Presidios history. So I started to dig into that and really find this intertwining of queer history and military history and started to put a program together that when I got hired at Roads of the Riveter, developed into a talk that I was giving at least once a week prior to the pandemic around World War II as this kind of tipping point in making queer communities a lot more visible in close to four years, larger, more visible and really setting us on a course to the gay rights movement and gay liberation as we think of it in the later part of the 20th century. So that's a little bit of why I'm on the panel. Great, thanks for sharing everyone. And hi, I'll introduce myself as well. So everyone knows why I am here as well. My name's Ryan White and I'm a writer and marketer for the Golanian National Purse Insurgency for the last eight years for the nonprofit partner of the National Park Service in the Bay Area. And I wrote about this topic last year but I am not a professional historian or interpreter unlike the excellent expertise we have on this panel but I am, as we all are today, learning about these interwoven histories through the expertise that we have on this panel. Thank you for all sharing why you're here and thank you, Stephanie, for that excellent overview. So let's dig into it. Let's talk about the effects of the military presence in the, let's talk about the effects that the military presence in San Francisco had on the LGBTQ plus community. And we can, first it could be anyone who wants to chime in can but we can start with that. So military history isn't my forte but I did write about the impact of the military presence and particularly the presence of people who had served in the military or currently serving in the military and the presence of the military's policing agencies in San Francisco in the World War II and the post-World War II era and the impact that had on the development of queer communities and queer politics in San Francisco in my book titled, White Open Town, A History of Queer San Francisco. So I wrote about it but I'm not a military historian and I don't really know the history as well as other folks who studied this connection specifically but the one thing that I wanna say in response to this question is that what was interesting I think about San Francisco is you have policing, you have queer communities that are evolving both through like organized civil rights organizations like Steph mentioned, the Daughters of Beletis, the Madison Society, both of which had their headquarters in San Francisco. The Madison Society formed in 1951 and by 1953 had moved itself to San Francisco in the Daughters of Beletis which was a lesbian civil rights organization formed in 1955 in San Francisco. So San Francisco was the place where formal queer civil rights organizations were founded but what I was really interested in was non-formal civil rights organizations and that is the evolution of queer communities and queer activism in spaces that were more public and less specifically political. And so I was looking at bars, cafes, parks, the spaces where people gathered where they thought that they could form community develop culture, make friends, have kind of chosen family sort of outside the public eye. And what happened in San Francisco is there were so many queer people in the war period because San Francisco was a port of de-embarkation for the Pacific theater of war and then the immediate post-war period because as Stephanie described a lot of people, queer people came out during the war because they were moved away from their homes and families and got to have these independent experiences. And then they decided to settle in San Francisco because they had spent time there and they felt like they could be themselves there. So you had all this kind of like community evolving and then there were these policing agencies and what's really fascinating is that the policing agencies were sort of tripartite. They were like local, state and federal. And so the local was the SFPD, the state was actually the liquor control agency which then was called the state board of equalization and the federal was the armed forces disciplinary control board. So this is where the military kind of really enters this story is as a policing agency. And these agencies had to cooperate and they weren't necessarily predisposed to cooperation. So in times where they could cooperate they were really effective and like basically shutting down queer life. But in times where they were unable to cooperate queer life just like exploded. And there was one such explosion between 1951 and 1954 in San Francisco and that the height of the Cold War at the height of McCarthyism, queer life was just exploding because these policing agencies kind of couldn't get it together. And it was really only the armed forces disciplinary control board that was active. And so their role in the formation of queer community in San Francisco in that little snapshot of time, 51 to 54 was really important. So that's what I have to say about the effect of the military presence in San Francisco on members of the LGBTQ plus community is that that was a direct relationship in that window of time. And I could tell you so much more about it but I will stop and let others speak. Thank you. That's great. Yeah. So it's true, right? That the sort of this explosion of queer community in San Francisco happens with World War II because it is a point of debarkation for the Pacific theater, right? But there was queer community in San Francisco even earlier in fact, right at the Presidio in 1918 and I'm looking at the San Francisco historic context statement. And the moral squad broke up a group of homosexuals, right? The Baker Street Club, which is right across the street from the Presidio apparently was this place where members of the gay community would meet and have community and hang out with each other and they busted them and exposed sort of this network of queer community in San Francisco in the 19 teens. So the connection with the military isn't just World War II and on it's there's also that connection with the base with there earlier. Yeah. Yeah. And apologies. My laptop just stopped working. So I missed some of man's answer. So apologies if I'm rehashing anything. But for me, the intertwining in militaries to really is my site right now focuses on World War II. And so it's really the level of consciousness raising that World War II did for the general public around sexual identity. It was something that state apparatuses were aware of in the years preceding the war were policing in a nascent way but not in a formal or written way or legislated way before World War II. But the draft process in World War II was so big and so many people went through it and we're hearing the word homosexual for the first time. We're hearing this thought of sexual identity as a part of who you were and not a thing that some people did, not a behavior. That that's one of the really big shifts that happened during World War II at least. And with the number of people who were moving in so many places, this was the third major of people in the generation. World War I had been huge. The depression had been massive and people moved a lot for that. And then World War II was huge on a different scale, was even bigger. And so many people went to so many places and found these communities that existed like Megan was just talking about your life existed before World War II but suddenly so many more people started to find it and so many more people started to get a taste of it and the American public started to think of it as a discrete type of person and not something that some people in the city did. So that's where I see the really rich intertwining. That's what I talked about. So we heard a little bit from Nan about a really rich conversation about the three different types of branches of enforcement that were kind of policing, that were policing queer communities. And how is it that when that was absent, how is it that we saw this explosion of the queer community happening particularly through the early fifties? Megan discussed that really the history, the intertwined history of the military and the LGBT community goes back even further, particularly in the Presidio in the case of the Baker Street scandal, which is really interesting. It's quite a few articles out there to check out about that. And then Mike let us know a little bit about how that kind of shift from the behavior of same-sex desire started to shift into this identity of one who engages in same-sex desire, gender non-conforming behavior. And so with all of those things being said, we have these rich sites in San Francisco and all over the country that can be used as places of interpretation and learning about LGBTQ history. And so my next question for the panel is what is the goal of memorializing these histories and what role can sites like National Park Service Sites or State Park sites or historic sites in general play in memorializing these stories? I'll start if that works. So as an, I'm an historical archeologist, I'm an anthropologist, we do a lot of theory about how society works. And some of the work we've done is about how is identity created? And it is created in conversation with the people who are around you, right? That's why, and that's not news, right? We talk about people wanting to have role models, right? And to be represented. And because if you don't see it, you can't be it, right? There's no back and forth if there's no other side to the conversation. And I came out in 1987 and my options at that time were as a lesbian to be crazy, a predator, a victim or dead, right? Those were my options. And it was a real struggle. Fortunately, I lived close enough to Toronto that it wasn't a long distance call that would charge to my mom's phone bill. I could call a helpline and I could talk to folks. And literally all I wanted to hear about was how they paid the bills and walked their dog and went to work every day and just had like a normal, normal life, right? That's what I needed. And so being sharing these stories and having these places, these historic places on the landscape and having queer history part of American history, right? Just part of, I mean, queer history is American history, right? Is representation and it is a way for us to see ourselves and form identities for ourselves. But it is also a way that people who aren't LGBTQ or under the umbrella to also like learn that we exist. Learn that we exist. If people don't know that queer people exist, then we are an anomaly and societies don't like things that are anomalies. So yeah, it really is part of just existing, really, as whole people. Thank you, Megan. Okay, so I'll follow up on that. And yeah, this question about representation is really important, really crucial. And one of the things that I do is I work and teach as a professor of women and gender studies at San Francisco State University. And one of the topics that we discuss often in the classroom is something that we call the politics of representation. And I wanna talk about the politics of representation right now in relation to this thing called queer theory. And queer theory makes a case that when something becomes a norm, there's always the not norm. So it's kind of like thinking about the question is what happens when through the politics of representation you create a new norm or an expanded norm, right? There's always the not norm, right? And so this is, I guess, what I have to say about memorializing history is that as you memorialize history, you set, you establish something that can be seen and represented and talked about, told stories about and identification that you can claim, right? And yet as we set something up as a norm, as a noble entity, there's always the not norm. There's always gonna be the not norm. It's not possible to contain in anything that can be represented, everything that might be represented. And there's the tension in queer theory around the politics of representation. So the goal of memorializing would be to create some mechanism of identification that's expansive, that has the possibility of admitting that it's incomplete, like kind of always already incomplete, always already in process. And this would be, I think the goal of memorializing rather than saying bit by bit, this exists, oh no, now this exists, oh no, now this exists, which is the sort of alphabetizing of what you might think of as queer, non-normative, non-binary, you know? So it's kind of a way of thinking about remembering the lives that have passed and the way in which the world might be. So that would be, I think it's very tricky, to apply in a practical way, yeah. Thanks, Nan, but it gets me thinking in a different way. And as an employee of the National Park Service, I worked for the federal government who's charged with upholding the constitution, which states in an effort to form a more perfect union. And this is why I think holding these sites into the national park system is a great example of the way we form a more perfect union doing exactly what Nan just said by recognizing you need to tell a fuller story and we're never gonna do it perfectly, we're always striving for more perfect, we're always striving for better, we're always striving for helping as many people as possible feel included and represented in the tapestry of American storytelling that the Park Service stewards and maintains for the American public that owns it. So that's the big, lofty 10,000 foot agency mission answer. The personal answer is I needed to see these stories when I was growing up, I didn't see them. I didn't see myself. And there's an inherent loneliness to some queer experience, it's not universal, but you talk to queer folks and there's a true line in a lot of stories because it's not an inherited identity, it's not something that your parents necessarily teach you or pass on or recognize that you're going through. So you have to seek it out, you have to find it yourself. And that starts by yourself. And the lifeline that a story about someone like you can be to a kid who's feeling by themselves in the middle of nowhere without knowing where to go and find these stories without knowing who to go and talk to, I don't think the importance of that lifeline can be overstated. And watching the public come and listen to someone dressed in a uniform or talk about a queer story, just the reaction that I've seen, I get emotional thinking about it, I've gotten emotional seeing the reactions from the public who are seeing themselves represented for the first time in this fashion by an entity and agency that wouldn't have included them in the very recent past. And still wouldn't if people within those entities were absolute decision makers. So that's the importance of memorializing the stories is who are we making space for? Is who are we helping understand that it's okay to be you in the world? And you're worth being a part of this story that we're all telling together and that we're all constantly trying to tell a more complete and an inclusive version of it. Yeah, Mike, the first time I went to Stonewall. So part of my history is before I came to this position, I'm in now with the American 250 Foundation. I worked for the National Park Service. And the first time I went to Stonewall, the interpreter there in uniform talked about the meaning of being a queer person. In uniform telling the story from history. And it was another really emotional moment because again, like here's the government that had done the lavender stare, had been pushing against marriage rights, has been arguing against civil rights for LGBTQ folks. And here's somebody in a Park Service uniform telling their own story in this place, this is so important. And it's really, it's really, it was really emotional for me. Thank you for sharing everyone. That was great. We talked about historical preservation really creating a sense of belonging for queer community and really the importance of creating personal connections so people can really see themselves in this history that is being preserved. And as most of us work on behalf of former military bases turn into national park sites that are very focused on place-based history. But given ever changing landscape of the LGBTQ plus community and queer spaces, does a history diminish when a physical structure isn't there anymore? Obviously we know that queer bars have a habit of moving to new spaces when they either become more successful or they have to move for other reasons. But what is the importance of, what is the importance of, oh, does a history diminish when a physical structure isn't there? So if the original building for something, it doesn't exist. And what does kind of querying the idea which Nan explained as non-normative, what does querying the idea of historical preservation mean to you? So the theme study was written specifically with the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks programs which are both park service programs in mind. So it really was about using place to talk about LGBTQ history and the geographers who wrote for it didn't have a problem with that and the community activists who wrote for the theme study didn't have a problem with that. But some of the historians needed a little bit of hand-holding about what does that mean? And it's like, well, it means you can't just say in San Francisco, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I need an address. I need a street address where somebody can go and stand in that space where that history happened. There is a power of place, right? The places really hold important places hold that energy, right? And I know it sounds woo, but I also know that I've experienced it and probably all of us have experienced like emotions that just come from being in a place, whatever that place is. And places, I'm thinking of tangentially queer history. I'm thinking of the Wesleyan Chapel up in Seneca Falls, New York where the first women's rights convention was held in 1848. And every year after that, every year in July a group of women have been meeting on that corner to commemorate that event. Even after the church got turned into a car dealership and a laundromat and offices and an apartment building and there was a peep show next door, every year they showed up, right? It was like a pilgrimage. And that, even though the place had changed and was so different, it was still really important. And then of course, as an archeologist, I'll say that even when these above ground spaces may no longer exist, that history may still exist as an archeological site. But I also think it's important to recognize queer history that's been a race, right? A lot of queer communities are in marginal places, right? Because we've been a marginalized community. And those are the areas that like here in DC that are now under the National Stadium that get torn down for new developments or the highway goes through them. And to mark the places where things were to re-place those spaces on the landscape, even if the building no longer exists, I think can be really powerful also. Yeah, I'll back that up because, you know, people, when I wrote my book, I interviewed, gosh, like 40, 50 people to tell me, and I was young in my 20s, and I asked people who were in their 50s and 60s who were queer and out in San Francisco prior to 1965, like, tell me about your relationship to the city of San Francisco or tell me about your favorite place in San Francisco. And so the memory is so attached to place, you know? And some of these places are, you know, buildings that can be preserved, right? But some of them are not, you know? But just to be aware of the places that were meaningful to people in queer history is vital, right? And what you wanna do with those places going forward, you know, that's really up to us as a community. You know, around preservation, around marking, like what are then the stories that we wanna tell? Like, how do we wanna remember that a lot of these places are contested? Meaning used by more than one community, right? For interest, for instance, San Francisco's Mission District, Valencia Street, right? Is San Francisco's Latino neighborhood? And yet there was like a lesbian, pretty much white lesbian, although probably mixed race section of Valencia Street that was crucial to the development of early lesbian and women's community cultural gatherings. And these two communities coexisted, like they figured out how to coexist. Which story do you tell when you put up a marker, right? Or you're an interpreter, right? So we have to be mindful of that, that these spaces of collective resistance are often used simultaneously by multiple communities who are sometimes friendly and sometimes not friendly toward each other, which again is the case for San Francisco, San Francisco's Mission District. And I'll tell you one more story. And that is several years ago, I did a tour of San Francisco's North Beach District that was organized by Michelle T, who has done a lot of work with San Francisco Public Library in the radar sort of queer authors and poets series. And anyway, she just had this idea, like let's do a walking tour, Nan, and we'll base it on your book. And in the back of my book, there's a little map of how to do it. In my book, there's a little map of queer sites in San Francisco's North Beach. And a lot of people have used, I've heard just word of mouth or informally, but a lot of people have used that little map for their own personal walking tour. There's no interpretation. The map just has little dots. And so she's like, I'll carry the bullhorn and you talk into it. And we'll just walk from lesbian, because it was a lot of lesbian space in this wonderful period of 1951 to 55. There were like 15 places that lesbians thought to themselves as like queer spaces for queer women. Spaces where queer women felt safe. And that doesn't mean it was all women. It just means that queer women felt safe going there, right? And so we did this, we walked around and none of these spaces were still queer spaces, right? These were like hairdressing spots and shut down entirely, a really popular kind of straight bar or a stripper joint. There was just like all kinds of stuff, but we would go into these spaces and people were like in awe, no matter what they were right now. And it was just like so fascinating how it doesn't matter if the space has become something else. It's still important to market and to remember it and to interpret it. And to talk about it and to take people there. So that's one of my more wonderful experiences with the history that I wrote as an academic to see it being consumed in this very public way in this very kind of way that was really sort of like multiple and layered. Lots of different kinds of people there for very different reasons wanting to participate. So it's a beautiful thing you can do with a walking tour. Yeah. Yeah, I don't really have much to add. I think two other panelists have covered it really well and given that they have more expertise in this particular passage than I do. Yeah, thank them for their great answers because I just learned a lot too. At this point, we have two minutes left in our schedule time, but I still want to encourage people. Our panelists, some of them have offered to stay a little bit later. And I realized that there's people in the audience as well. Please feel free to throw in questions. I can't stress this is a pretty unique opportunity to have people like this sitting in a room. If queer history is something that you are obsessed with, that you love, that you feel alone studying or trying to interpret wherever you are or trying to engage with, then now is a great time for some Q and A. So Greg L has actually thrown something into the Q and A as soon as I finish this up. And so with the rise of, Greg has shared with the rise of the tech industry and the price hike in general living in San Francisco and the Bay, do you see the loss of queer space and a loss of queer history? I see it, I mean, yes, right? The sort of really short answers is yes. And we've seen, we see queer community move all the time. Again, you know, as a marginalized community, right? We don't often or have not in the past often owned our own buildings, right? We're meeting in renting space and when the rent goes up, we've got to find more space. Whether that's meeting at a formal sort of community meeting or meeting with friends in your apartment, right? If the living rates go up, we move to another neighborhood. And so you see, you know, different people, community moves around and San Francisco is not the only place where we're seeing that. If you, you know, I'm here in Washington DC and DuPont Circle is, you know, has this sort of storied, well-known queer history that if you go through there now is just a little bit of, it's a shadow, right? There's still pride flags, but not really the same kind of businesses, right? That anchored that community. So it's in this transition into a not gay community but people still remember it as a queer community, as a queer neighborhood. And so it is still a place where people go and then it's like, but the things that we want to see are not here anymore, right? And so then, and so because queer bars and queer folks have moved into other neighborhoods. So it is, we move around, we're a resilient bunch, you know, if we're out of one place, we'll figure out where else we can go. Yeah, my short answer to that question is, you know, yes, Polk Street is a prime example. And then finally, the tech industry has also made San Francisco very wealthy. What is the city gonna do with that wealth? I think the city should invest in preservation and the Historic Preservation Commission has a lot of queer sites on its docket right now that it should really be paying attention to, right? If the history is being lost in the present, let's make sure it stays in the past. I mean, not stays in the past, but that we can remember the past through the way in which we invest in it today. Yeah, I've only lived in the Bay Area for about two and a half years. And so yeah, I don't have the long lines to notice the change, but, you know, as the queer millennial growing up in New Hampshire, you know, get to New York, get to San Francisco, get to these places. In modern day and age, it's hard to find the locates. It's hard to find the center of things. So the Caster is still an anchor, for sure, and a lot of people are there, but there's pockets of queer community throughout San Francisco, throughout Oakland, throughout the Bay Area. And so it's not the only place to go in order to find that community. So I think it's a great thing that there's just more places for queer community to be safe. It's not quite as much of a struggle as it used to be. And we see the historic Enclave take on a new shape where, you know, bars in the Caster are a lot more expensive than other parts of the city because tourists will go there and they'll pay the prices better there. And so it's maybe not the best place for every segment of the queer community to be okay. And that has a lot of reasons why that happens. My impression is that the tech industry, as a facet of it, is a big reason. And then there's other ones too. But again, I don't have the tenure here, the length of ones to know firsthand how that's shifted. But just my personal impression is that it's easier to be queer in more places and that's great. And I hear a lot about the way things were and about how significant the communities were when Enclave's were more. Homogeneous isn't the right word, but when there was a little bit more agency of the community to make it look the way that the community wanted it to look and not outside forces that are looking to capitalize often, often, some folks. Thank you all. I think we've gone a little bit over time. We have covered a lot of bases. I think that there is a lot of really good information in terms of definitely seeing it. How is it that LGBTQ history is preserved? How is it that queer theory plays a role in establishing what is it that's preserved and when we have preservation, how is it that we're setting these sorts of precedents for the future as to what people will look back on and say this was what was going on at this time and how is it that we can expand that lens and make it so that people think less about what happened in a specific building or in a specific place, but also think about the stories that maybe aren't being told as much. They were still very impactful in that area in that time. And I think that really wraps up into understanding the historical context of all aspects of LGBTQ history, which of course is spanning all histories and all time in that way. And so I wanna leave it to our panelists or presentation or folks who did our presentation to kind of finish this off with any additional comments that you'd like to make, anything that you'd like to use this space or this platform to let folks know about. And I wanna thank our partners over at San Francisco Public Libraries who create incredible platforms and make it so that in a time we're in, we are cut off from that beautiful public that we are energized by, that we are inspired by, that we get to walk into rooms and make smile, make laugh and hopefully make cry every once in a while, that we're able to do it virtually as well. And so I have to thank San Francisco Public Libraries for that as well as the Golden Gate Parks Conservancy who is our partner for Golden Gate National Recreation Area and great friends of ours as well. So I'd love to leave it to our panelists, our presenters as well. Let us know, is there anything that you feel you'd love to leave the audience thinking about, love to leave folks chewing on as we finish up our program today? This took meanwhile to realize, right? But this sounds so trite and weird, but history's still happening. And we're all in history and we're all living history and making history. And there's a lot of LGBTQ history that we'll never know because people didn't think it was important or their families were ashamed and so many things that seem silly or mundane or event fliers, right? That got destroyed. Think about preserving your history as you live it. Not just for yourself, but also potentially for everybody else in the future. Gosh, I guess the thing that I want to say at the very end is that I think that we should keep our eye on as like queer history becomes more valuable to our local, state and federal government agencies. I think we should keep our eye on when those sites or sites of interpretation become monetarily valuable, become a commodity. We should just be very careful as we pay attention to who then profits from that monetary value. And I guess that's just like the last thing I want to say is San Francisco's early success in queer resistance, liberation, freedom, et cetera was the way in which small business owners, foreigners were able to take their profit and funnel it into basically legal action to protect civil rights. So let's just keep our eye on the price. Follow the money. Thanks for saying that, man. And for me too, our thing is getting sacrificed in pursuit of that profit. Our parts of the story being left out to benefit the folks who are benefiting more than the community that needs to hear that story is a factor. The public talk that I would give at Rosie focused really heavily on legacy and counterpointing legacy as the individual things really behind. It's ties to wills and to what you pass on to your progeny with cultural legacy and the stories that we tell together. So I want to thank Megan for encouraging everyone to think about yourself and to recognize that you're important and that you moving through the world is happening and people in the future can benefit from knowing what your life was like. And doing it in a setting where we are building a broader cultural legacy together right now. That's what this event is, is telling a fuller story. Is it coming together people who participate in this particular cultural legacy and want to share it with others who participate in it? I'm really fascinated by the link between the cultural legacies we participate in and inherit and the identities. That's what queer storytelling and queer cultural legacy is. And that can be said of most identities that people inhabit. And again, as Megan said earlier, identity is in conversation with the people who are identifying us. It's an intensely personal thing that's within our control but 100% reliant on who is perceiving us and how they're perceiving us. And so there's a tension there that can be challenging, can be icky, can be euphoric and amazing. It can be all of these things at the same time in turn. And so I just want to encourage anyone who's listening to keep going and keep trying to navigate all that. Keep trying to hold all of those treats together and parse them apart from each other when you're able to or feel okay doing it. Because part of being human is being complicated and messy and not understanding that the way. And that's why we come together and do these things is to try to understand a little more and to try to use each other's stories and each other's experiences to help untangle ourselves just a little bit more. So thank you all for giving us a chance to do that today, for sharing it with us for the last hour. And good luck as you continue doing it. And I know I'm always here if you want to continue talking about it. Yeah, and I just want to say thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to participate on this wonderful panel. I've really enjoyed it. I've learned a lot from everybody and it's a great way to celebrate pride. So thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Thank you all. Seth and Ryan, do you want to share anything before we finish up? Yeah, well kind of going off what Nan just said and it is pride and it's the end of pride. And I just want to encourage people to go off what Megan said earlier, queer history is American history and we exist after June and we are gay all year and we're trans all year and we are always here existing and our history is always existing. So I hope that people will continue these conversations past this month throughout the year. Queer people were in every part of history. Black trans women were pioneers in civil rights movements. It's important to recognize queer people's roles in all of these movements. So whatever history month you're focusing on, queer people were there and they should be highlighted as well. So whenever you're talking to, whether you're an educator, a neighbor, a friend, incorporating these stories is possible and really vital. Yeah, and hopefully we just thank you to everyone for joining us today and for all our panelists, for diving deep into local history. It's important to understand this history so we understand the contents of the present day and part of sharing these histories is also building relevancy to these places that we might just pass by on the street and not really feel a personal connection to. So hopefully we've had a peak to curiosity to investigate some more local LGBTQ history and San Francisco history and hopefully everyone has a good pride. And as Stephanie said, pride is all year long. So we will definitely be telling more of these stories. Thank you. Hector, you wanna say anything last? I'm like, I guess I have to say something. Thank you all. I think when we were envisioning doing this program, there was a lot of things going through our heads and it's been really interesting to see how this is gonna be recorded, people can kind of find this information and particularly the richness of the conversation around the way in which we can memorialize LGBTQ sites in military sites, but also all over in many public history sites, all over the city, all over the country as well, I think was really fruitful. And so I just wanna thank everyone for participating in this conversation. And yeah, I could never imagine that I would go from really ashamed of myself for who I am to being a part of something that creates not only pride but also a legacy and a looking back on throughout history that there are many shoulders that we're standing on that we don't even know about. So that was, yeah, that's all I got. That was a beautiful ending. Thank you Hector. And thank you to all of our panelists. This was so wonderful and you were all just brilliant human beings. And it's true, someone in the chat said representation absolutely matters and it is all year round. People are gay all year round. Yay. So thank you Golden Gate Park Conservatives, Conservaty and Golden Gate National Park Services. We love you and we thank you for being here today. And you can watch this again and I'm gonna quickly put this link again because it is loaded with amazing resources. All right, Library Family. We'll see you again next time. Everybody wave goodbye.