To feel sympathy to the National Trust volunteers at Felbrigg Hall?

I don't think anyone who volunteers should be made to wear a badge promoting something their 'employer' supports when it comes to sensitive issues like sexual orientation. Everyone is entitled to their own views on such matters and as long as they keep them to themselves, that's fine. So the NT is wrong imo to force volunteers to 'support' their views.

I also think it's just naff of the NT to feel such a badge is necessary. People go to NT houses for all kinds of reasons, but why would they want the sexual preferences of the former owners shoved in their faces?

People wear badges, necklaces, bracelets for all sorts of things.

Half of LGBT kids are bullied at school. There is still a looooong way to go.

I would add I was hugging an AIDS victim before Dianna !

I agree with Ironingmountain

But it shouldn't be mandatory.

I wouldn't trust a word that comes out of the National Trust's mouth. I've seen first hand the way the steam roller into acquired properties they can't even afford. The way they sanitise them and rewrite the former owner's story and present it to the public as something that is a lie. The way they push out tenants and residents illegally. The way they disregard planning laws, wildlife laws and every other legal obligation they should be held to.

They are utter cunts. I'll bet this story has been manipulated to make the volunteers look bad.

Is this a question of trying to turn a national trust property into "the one with the gay owner" and the volunteers feeling this is a limited focus? Sorry it seems that there is more to the story and I am struggling to read between the lines.

I am fully supportive of rights for all -my own sexual orientation is not conventional. However I feel that sexuality is personal (NB personal and private but not "secret"). I don't understand why an organisation that looks after old houses is asking volunteers to publicly "support" the fact that people have different sexual orientations. It's a fact of life, it's fully protected by law, accepted by the vast majority, with a minority that are fully aware that their views are unacceptable.

I work in the public sector so I'm in receipt of public money, too and would be quite miffed to be asked to wear badges to support whatever the latest campaign is. Wearing badges is childish imo.

It's a bloody badge to show support, not an indepth study of his private life. Should all badges showing support be banned then?

The previous owner couldn't be out due to the laws at the time. The vast majority of gay men kept to themselves out of necessity. We can't say one way or another if he would have liked to be out.
But the national trust are not wrong to have a campaign to show all are welcome.

I'm not anti LGBT.
My late BIL was gay, I first met him in 1981 and he was outrageously camp, I had never met anyone like him before (i was only 20). Despite this we became quite close, a year or so later we discovered he had HIV. This was at the time of the 'gay plague' don't drink from the same cup ! In fact once when he was admitted to the local hospital, someone informed the local press and it was front page news on the local paper the next week ! I still have a leather biker jacket that he left me.
Few years later we moved into a street where we had gay NDNs very few people in the street spoke to them, they invited us to some great parties, a lot of Thunderbird was consumed.
All this said I still feel it wrong to force the NT staff to wear these badges.

Saucery I agree totally with you. The NT seems to think members of the public can cope with only one thing and will theme a house to push one angle and that alone as if that is the only viewpoint in which to see the house and it's family.

It's dull and it's ahistorical. This one aspect then gets rammed down your throat in every bloody room of the house.

It's put me off visiting NT properties. Yes I appreciate the owner of Felbrigg might have been private because being gay was illegal. But even if it had not been illegal, would he have put posters up on his house to say 'Hello, I'm the owner of the gay house?' Most people who interacted with him would still not have known his sexuality, just like I don't know the sexuality of my work colleagues unless they choose to tell me.

^ That's interesting Egg. I looked at the media reports and they tended to hint this, before choosing the narrative of homophobia. I guess a story about homophobia sells better than one about individuals questioning re how a historical individual is portrayed and represented.

Nobody should be homophobic or not support LGBT rights. I applaud the NT for doing this. I don't give a stuff if the gentleman in question was shy about it or if his family are against this( do we know this as fact). Nobody should feel ashamed of being gay or feel the need to hide it. We are NT members as are all our family members. We must have paid hoards to the NT over the years. I have a gay teen who goes to NT properties( albeit reluctantly these days). We are having to teach him the history of the LGBT community in this country and modern day support helps to ensure he feels no negativity towards his sexuality or himself. I would like to see all properties doing the same thing instead of just one. There will be many gay members of the public and their families visiting NT houses. Members of the public who refuse to wear such a worry badge should not be volunteering.

Antigonads my mum has cancelled hers too, having been a member for very many years.

The previous owner is a distant relative of mine. I hadn't seen any of this in the news until last night. My mum, who knew the owner / relative well when she was younger, is very sad that he has been "outed" as it's nobody's business and not relevant to Felbrigg at all. He's been dead since 1967 or whenever, his private life should be allowed to remain private.

I don't agree that the volunteers are against supporting gay rights etc, more that they respect the former owner and his family and have no interest in helping to publicise his private life.

I've decided to cancel my NT membership because of this.

Oh my god Stripy, the irony. So, it's ok to marginalise people if they won't conform in public because it conflicts they think (or get up to) in private, despite that having no negative impact on anyone else?

God I wish I could think of an analogy for that..

Saucery - you've partly articulated what I was thinking. Someone who had quite a few accomplishments is reduced to 'being gay', even though that wasn't a major public part of his life.

It's like going to Hilltop and surrounds and seeing Beatrix Potter reduced to those damn rabbits in waistcoats. I remember asking a NT staff member if there was anything about her scientific work or even (ironically) her conservation work in setting up the NT and was told basically that there wasn't much (just bits here and there), and this was frustrating for the staff, but the books sold the property, as it were.

For instance, look at the 5th Marquess Of Anglesey. Much speculation there but the NT just include him as part of the history.

It sounds gimmicky to me and the NT should respect the wishes of the previous owner's family.

I'm very far from being homophobic or anti-gay rights/gay equality and I am not sure that I would be comfortable with wearing this pin.

Firstly, I am not sure I am OK with some of the stuff that has become extremely prominent in the whole LGBTABCDEFG area in the past few years (especially some of the things associated with the trans issue, and the continued expansion of the general area to include a lot of stuff which I don't particularly think should be there, like weird made-up identities that look a lot like heterosexual attention-seeking).

Secondly, as others have said, wearing pins can come across as being virtue-signalling and annoying.

I can sympathise with the volunteers here, who presumably feel they have a loyalty to the house, its previous inhabitants and their descendants more than they do to their employer.

If this chap had kept his homosexuality as a well-guarded secret, and his remaining family are uncomfortable with the celebration of it, I think these volunteers are being loyal to them. That's OK.

There's a recent trend for the NT to focus on one aspect of the long history of a property. It's gimmicky and irritating and masks the huge range of history many properties have.
I agree the volunteers aren't necessarily being bigoted. There are many houses, in their ownership and private, where you can have a fair guess at the private lives of the family. To highlight one particular person like this is crass.

From the BBC website:

Annabel Smith, head of volunteering and participation development at the National Trust, said: "All of our staff and volunteers sign up to our founding principles when they join us - we are an organisation that is for ever, for everyone.

"We are committed to developing and promoting equality of opportunity and inclusion in all that we do."

...but if you're a long standing volunteer that doesn't want to promote LGBT rights in an out of context environment with the aim of nothing more than virtue signalling, you'll be banished to a role away from the public. Got it, NT.

How is it childish Littlechip? People can choose to be homophobic if they like, everyone is entitled to their private thoughts but if they're then disadvantaged because of those thoughts I've got no sympathy for them.

Has anyone considered that the previous owner was a 'very private man' because had he not been he would have ended up in jail.

How about the NT pop a few rainbows up in the tearoom or the shop and offer staff badges and lanyards if they want them? I'd say the same for poppies, reindeer horns or not that it will ever happen women's symbols or purple, white and green ribbons for a suffragette's premises.