President Trump recently signed an executive order directed at Smithsonian museums and national parks, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the attention since has focused on the Smithsonian piece of the order. The appointment of a National Park Service (NPS) director is often an afterthought; to date, no director has been named. Places like Yellowstone National Park don’t tend to be considered hot springs for controversy. But with enough determination, even the seemingly innocuous can be hijacked for ideological purposes. In fact, on closer inspection, the NPS promotes gender ideology and the perverse work of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, founder of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.
One article by the NPS, “Expressions as Diverse as the Landscape: Kinsey Institute, Bloomington, IN,” lauds the conclusions of the discredited Kinsey, contending that he “conducted pioneering research to challenge ideas of normativity and discriminatory laws regarding sexual behavior” and contributed to a “heterosexual-homosexual rating scale, placing the sexual behavior of individuals along a continuum.” The article was first produced in 2016, and the website on which the article is hosted was last updated on February 19, 2025.
In recent years, people have scrutinized Kinsey’s conclusions, questioning his sample sizes and the overrepresentation of certain groups in his research. Yet, while valid, these criticisms overlook the nature of his “research” and the fundamental objection to it. The sample size should have been zero.
Kinsey’s work was morally perverse, detailing the molestation of boys as young as two months. The infamous tables in “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” published in 1948, documented the sexual abuse of 317 boys. According to a colleague, Kinsey would “listen only to pedophiles who were very careful, used stopwatches, knew how to record their thing.”
This is the reality of what the NPS promotes and praises on its website. Declaring that Kinsey is worthy of celebration is an attack on the most fundamental human sentiments and the laws of nature. What a country deems worthy of honor—and the NPS is a federal entity—says something about the nation’s character and, over time, disrupts and shifts its principles.
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For context, the Kinsey article is part of a series by the NPS’s Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education on “Finding Our Place: LGB Heritage in the United States.” Each of the 25 articles explains the significance of a site, monument, or building in LGBTQ+ terms.
While the Kinsey Institute should not be equated to the other places on the list, the entire slate of articles is aimed not at historical and natural preservation, but activism—and, specifically, the promotion of gender ideology. Articles celebrate “diverse gender expression,” medical treatments performed “based on a patient’s own gender identity,” and the upending of “ideas of normativity.”
At its core, gender ideology aims to disrupt norms and transform society, but such a mission is not in keeping with the scope of the NPS.
The NPS website is a go-to resource for parents planning family excursions to historic sites and national parks, where three generations—grandparents, parents, and children—often share memorable experiences, marveling at nature’s wonders and rediscovering the American story. For this reason alone, the NPS merits oversight by the American people.
In addition, the NPS controls more than is commonly assumed. In 1933, under President Franklin Roosevelt, the War Department transferred 57 historical sites—many of them battlefields—to the NPS. Currently, both the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials fall under the NPS, and the exhibit spaces at those memorials are being reimagined and expanded ahead of America’s 250th anniversary.
Given this, the NPS’s tendency toward ideology is concerning, most especially as this turn involves embracing Alfred Kinsey’s work.
Cover designed by Jared Goudl using an image by Wardsr of Sarah Parke Morrison Hall, Indiana University, home of the Kinsey Institute, found on Wikimedia Commons & a screenshot of “Expressions as Diverse as the Landscape: Kinsey Institute, Bloomington, IN” found on the National Park Service website.
