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

it sounds as if the owner of Fellbrigg took his sexuality as a pivotal factor in his decision to give the house to the Trust.

Does it?! When his family think he was very private about it? I don't follow.

I don't think you can make anachronistic determinations about who might be a 'gay citizen'. You're assuming that a twenty-first-century term and concept are applicable to anyone, unproblematically. That's a form of appropriation and erasure - it's bad history, essentially.

The charitable objects of the NT are to preserve for the benefit of the nation land or objects of beauty or historic interest and any contents within the latter.

Their vision is "for ever, for everyone" which is where I suspect the current badge wearing comes into play as it has fuck all to do with their actual charitable objects which is why they exist and is what they are supposed to do.

Unless they are actively stopping LGBT people, or people of race, or men, or women, or aliens from the planet Arg (Gronda, Gronda, your majesty) then they are achieving their vision without needing to impose anything on any volunteers.

Inclusion is about tolerance and respect and this has to extend all ways.

LRD: I am saying that the building and history people who built, used and lived in heritage buildings is as important as the building itself. They are inextricable if we are to fully understand.

We can't have a full picture of Harewood House without knowing it's funding, and it sounds as if the owner of Fellbrigg took his sexuality as a pivotal factor in his decision to give the house to the Trust.

The evolution of equality is an important history in our country.

Sex and sexuality wasn't that explicit between Vita Sackville West, Harold Nicholson and Virginia Woolf but the it is key to the way the rooms and buildings were used at Sissinghurst .

Gay citizens are citizens who happen to be gay.

Presumably many NT properties have the lives of people who were gay within their histories, how can that be hidden if we are to understand history, and why should it be?

LRD I agree that would be a bad approach. I haven't seen how they present things at the property so have no idea if they have taken his story and squashed it to fit a modern view of being gay, or if they use his diaries to try to give a nuanced account of his life.

But I don't think the use of the rainbow symbol or a celebrity to promote the property necessarily says anything about how they've approached the history. Marketing choices like that are often done by people with much less expertise in the subject they are marketing and much more expertise in the people they are marketing to.

So the thing I'd like to know is; are all NT volunteers at all sites being asked to wear rainbow lanyards/pins?
Because I'd think that was great & appropriate, given the 50yrs reflections/celebrations at the moment (thinking of the brilliant BBC season in particular).
But if it's just at this house and just based on a man who may or may not have self-identified as gay, I think that's not so great. Especially as it's highly possible that the very public "outing" of that individual would have been deeply hurtful and has been made without his choice, long after he died. Being welcoming of all, embracing diversity is absolutely what the NT should be/do. but I'm not sure this is about that...

What are 'gay citizens' exactly?

I don't think I follow what you're saying about Harewood House. Yes, it's important descriptions should record that it was built on the proceeds of the slave trade. What does that have to do with Felbrigg?

So many social movements and evolutions are tied up with the history of land and property.

Harewood House is not NT, but the massive omission of it's being but with proceeds of the Slavs trade from many descriptions about it renders those descriptions meaningless, historically.

Tne history of tne lives of gay citizens, before and after legalisation, is an important history, and it is fair enough for tne NT to highlight aspects of this history.

It is fair enough to ask all staff, including volunteers, to wear badges reflecting the theme .

That is what they were being asked to do: wear a corporate badge avertising the highlighted history.

Actually I think what the NT needs to realise is that if you're dependant on the goodwill of volunteers to staff your business, you're in no position to start making demands on them that aren't related to their ability to perform their role.

As I said upthread my organisation is currently promoting badges that people can wear if they are open to discussing LGBT issues. I will not wear one because I am not keen for a discussion at work about the T element of that. Key thing is that the wearing of the badge is optional- and we are paid so if anyone was to be forced to do it then should be us rather than volunteers. But as my company is relatively progressive they realise that this is not something that should be mandated.

What the volunteers need to understand is that it is entry fees that keep the NT alive and telling gay people they aren't welcome is obviously a bad idea.

Oh, come, on that is not the message this sends!

Depends how much consultation the NT did before launching the campaign tbh. I don't think that anyone is surprised to find out that a few old people are homophobic especially not after recent political events. What the volunteers need to understand is that it is entry fees that keep the NT alive and telling gay people they aren't welcome is obviously a bad idea.

toad - I'm not quite sure, but maybe?

I'm sorry, I can't find which post by rookie you mean.

I think the NT is entitled to use the diaries for research. I admit, if they include an entry where he uses the term 'gay' and applies it to himself, and indicates he'd be happy for people to know that about him were it legal, I'd feel very differently. But if his diaries only talk about (let's say) his emotions towards men, then that's more of a grey area, and I think it would be better to quote him, using his own words, and not to label him or make him into an icon (so I agree with you about that bit).

I don't think anyone can be objective or detached about history. Especially when terms such as 'gay' come into play. A man might have identified as 'homosexual,' but not as gay. A man might identify as 'gay' but not 'queer'. A man might well never use any of these terms. I do think it matters to respect those views.

If the NT wanted to tell this man's story, that might be fine. But to label him as gay when there's evidence he would not have wanted that, is disrespectful and arrogant.

Oscar Wilde comes to mind here. There was a time when his marital life - his wife and his children - were almost airbrushed out of the picture, because they didn't fit with what people then thought 'gay' men's histories included. I've heard people suggest he only expressed affection for them because it was expected - because of course gay men don't want children.

Thank goodness, we've mostly left that belief behind, and we accept that being gay doesn't mean you're incapable of wanting children. But, I would hate to imagine what we're airbrushing out of the picture, because we assume we know exactly what it means to be 'gay'. It could be something important.

I think we have to be wary of saying that heterosexuality is celebrated by the NT and other organisations - particularly when the artefacts on show are a family portrait or a wedding dress. From that information I can only know that two people were married and had children.

Due to societal expectations we don't know if they were attracted to each other, or if they were in a business arrangement and having romantic same sex affairs.

And as LRD says, the idea of homosexuality that we have now, wasn't around then. Ancient Greece is often mentioned for its male same sex relationships, but those men also had wives - it was a different way of looking at sexuality completely.

LRD,

The way I see it is that the NT is entitled to (and should) present the man's life according to the evidence in his diaries and other personal effects received by them, together with the context of the time. rookiemere's example further up this page would be within this meaning. In otherwords, objective, historical and detached. I don't think it would be right for the family's (or volunteers') objections to prevent such an approach: after all, the evidence was handed over to the NT. I would go further and say that it's the NT's responsiblity to tell the stories of people such as him as they are part of history, if properly evidenced.

Where I would draw the line is using those materials to turn him into some sort of icon or using it to further a campaign.

Is that more or less your view too?

Stephen Fry's defence of the NT's position and the video he voiced for them, presumes all gay people are basically the same. And they're just not. There are plenty of people living today who wouldn't want their sexuality discussed in public. It doesn't necessarily mean they're ashamed or repressed - they might just be quite private

Well said. There are also large numbers of men who have sex with men who don't identify as gay.

I don't agree that him leaving his diaries to the NT was implied consent to having them revealed to the public. He died before homosexuality was even legal, so it's pretty unlikely that he expected that our culture would become so open so quickly. He might be delighted, he might be horrified. While there are still people alive who knew him well, I think the NT should respect their views.

That wasn't quite what I meant.

This is someone who, according to accounts of people who knew him, may never have understood himself as 'gay' or 'homosexual'. Maybe he had sex with men. Maybe he was attracted to men. But it seems pretty clear his public persona didn't include those details. It seems to me that, in presuming it's ok to label him as 'gay,' the NT is assuming all gay people must be the same. Certainly, Stephen Fry's defence of the NT's position and the video he voiced for them, presumes all gay people are basically the same. And they're just not. There are plenty of people living today who wouldn't want their sexuality discussed in public. It doesn't necessarily mean they're ashamed or repressed - they might just be quite private. Or they might be aware their sexuality is a bit more complex than some of the labels that might be applied to it.

I agree there's a place for celebrating all sorts of different stories about sexuality across history, but presuming 'sexuality' means 'homosexual or heterosexual' is reductive and anachronistic.

LRD I don't think they are flattening out gay history unless this is the only site they ever mention gay issues at. If they were doing it at this site in order to ignore elsewhere, that would be ridiculously tokenistic. But if this is one opportunity that they've actually taken, and one of the next times there's an opportunity they take that one too, then isn't that how the NT show the rich history that we have - by using the individual stories available at their many properties? This house isn't an LGBT museum, they're showcasing the human stories in one property and focusing on an aspect that isn't commonly highlighted. We get the rich tapestry when they do it again and again at other properties. Which they hopefully will. Just as we get the rich tapestry of heterosexual lives by the many and varied ways they talk about marriage etc. through out history, class and place at many different properties).

Freedom of thought, actions and speech are the true protectors of our liberty, not shouting 'Bigot" at an elderly NT volunteer.

Wholly agree.

Plus - and I'm genuinely interested - can someone explain why they think that NT properties "celebrate heterosexuality"? I've thought hard about this this afternoon and I can't think of an example I've seen. A lot of the properties will document the history of the families who have lived there (which obviously required sex between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation) and I've sometimes seen wedding dresses or love letters, but I've always thought they were presented as historical artefacts (this is what x wore in 1786; here is a letter from X to Y in 1788 - all very matter of fact). If anything, I'd say they show things pretty "unromantically" - one NT volunteer was valiantly explaining to my DD how the housekeeper wouldn't automatically put a married couple in the same room together unless she was sure that that would have been "acceptable" to them (i.e. If she was sure they actually slept together) and how many married couples had interconnecting doors with a lock on the lady's side. So, arguably, they show historical marriages in a pretty honest light, rather than celebrating their heterosexual basis.

Equally, I took my daughters to the Moomins exhibition on the South Bank. They like the Moomins. There were many snippets about the author, whom I hadn't known beforehand was gay. This wasn't explicitly stated anywhere, but they had a photo of her with her partner (female) and their house and some letters on display in which she referred to her partner. I wouldn't have said that that exhibition "celebrated homosexuality" either. I would have said it was an exhibition about the Moomins.

The national trust and this particular property are of course free to make the decision they wish volunteers to wear this badge , however volunteers are equally free to regent this if they have either different views or do not wish to as they do not wand to promote this or indeed any other cause. This does not make the volunteers bigots, people are entitled to their views, we live in a free country, the use of the word biggot is inappropriate.

Thanks, Tamzin, that's interesting to know.

I'm the only one you were replying to in that post smile

You weren't.

No Saucery. Each property makes its own decisions. There is no big high up NT Person deciding what we should all do. We each have a general manager, sometimes in charge of several close properties. This decision would have been made locally. We would never want to discourage footfall at Sissinghurst, particularly as most of the money taken is ploughed straight back into our property.

It's a sad indictment of today's society when reluctance to wear a pin badge has you labelled as 'bigot'. Individual Free speech and free thought be damned. - you must follow like a sheep without any comment or question

Agree totally. Can't people see how dangerous it is to create a world where only a single viewpoint is tolerated? It may seem fine when the single viewpoint coincides with your own beliefs, but what happens when the tide turns and it's your ideas that are condemned as bigotry? There seems to be a naive idea that there is a one way track to progressive, correct thought and that, as long as we shove everyone down it, all will be well. Freedom of thought, actions and speech are the true protectors of our liberty, not shouting 'Bigot" at an elderly NT volunteer.

I suspect that some NT volunteers are homophobic. I suspect some are racist. I suspect some are sexist. I don't condone those views, but nor do I condone them having to feign support for a campaign with which they disagree, when they could never have reasonably expected this to be part of the role when they signed up. And I think exactly the same about the forced wearing of poppies, despite having been a fundraiser for the Royal British Legion for 15 years.