Reflections

Washington D.C. is such an amazing city.  It was beautiful on Sunday so we walked around Arlington National Cemetery, visited several monuments and then had a wonderful walk under the blossoming cherry trees circling the Tidal Basin.  

During our four days here we've visited the museums on our bucket list:  National Museum of American History, National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Today we started with the "Changing America" exhibit at the American History Museum.  This was a wonderful documentation of cultural change from the Emancipation Proclamation to the March on Washington in 1963.  One of the displays covered the marches on Washington for other groups that experienced discrimination, including this poster from the march for gay rights in 1979.

During our visit, I was struck by the fact that we, LGBT, have a limited presence here in the museums of our nation's capital.  There was no mention of the lesbians who served our country in the Women in Military Service for America Memorial.  Doesn't our friend Grethe Cammermeyer deserve to be recognized for her struggle challenging the anti gay policies of our military?  In the American Indian museum I could find no acknowledgement of the "two spirit" people, the androgynous or transgender tribal members held in high regard as spiritual and specially blessed.  Where are we in American history?  Will we ever have our own museum exhibit in DC to document our history and culture and our contributions to this country? 

Holocaust Museum