Isabela Espadas Barros Leal

The National Park Service will allow employees to participate in celebratory parades and events in uniform, a departure from earlier memos to staff membersweeks before the start of LGBTQ Pride Month that effectively banned such uniformed employees from marching in public events.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland clarified the policy for Special Emphasis Programs — which includes programming about the LGBTQ community — in a memo to staff members Friday. She did not directly address Pride Month, which begins Saturday. 

“I am directing Bureau leaders or their designated officials to determine how and when bureaus should participate in these externally organized events. This could include marching units in parades, booths at parades, events etc. This would allow employees to participate in uniform representing their respective bureau. This direction takes effect immediately,” Haaland wrote in the memo. 

She added, “Bureau leaders or designated officials must apply consistent criteria for determining the appropriate nature of participation.”   

The park service and the Interior Department shared copies of the memo in response to a request for comment. NPS added that it “is working on implementation guidance for parks.” 

A previous department memo shared with NBC News asked employees to refrain from “participating in or attending any demonstration or public event wherein the wearing of the uniform could be construed as agency support for a particular issue, position, or political party.” While that memo did not directly address Pride Month, a follow-up Q&A document shared with NBC News said external Pride events were included in the policy. 

The memo caused confusion in the department, according to park service staffers, because it appeared to be a departure from how the agency has previously enforced certain policies. 

Haaland appeared to address the confusion in her memo, writing: “We have an obligation to implement policy fairly and equitably. My hope is that this direction addresses any implementation questions or confusion as we enter a number of Special Emphasis Months.” 

NPS affirmed in a social media post last week that “National parks are for everyone” alongside an image of the Stonewall Inn, the site of a historic 1969 uprising in New York City that sparked the modern LGBTQ rights movement. The park service oversees the Stonewall National Monument, across the street from the bar. 

The park service said in the caption that it celebrates “the contributions of LGBTQ+ Americans past and present, including our team of employees, partners and volunteers.”

Schools, colleges and universities were the third most common location for a hate crime to be committed in the United States from  2018 to 2022, new FBI data shows, with more than 4,300 reported offenses, or 7.7% of total offenses over those five years, taking place in an educational setting. 

The number of reported hate crime offenses across all categories increased from 8,492 in 2018 to 13,346 in 2022, according to a report released Monday by the FBI. The most common location for a hate crime was in home or residential settings, followed by those occurring on highways, roads and alleys. 

The number of offenses in school settings has fluctuated slightly year to year. It reached its lowest point — 500 offenses, or 3.9% of all reported hate crime offenses nationwide — in 2020, as a likely result of school closures during the pandemic, the report stated. The highest number was in 2022, when 1,336 offenses, or 10%, were reported at schools. 

The data also revealed the number of reported offenses at schools based on their bias motivation: The most common were anti-Black (1,690), anti-LGBTQ (901) and anti-Jewish (745) offenses over the course of the five years. 

When breaking down the anti-LGBTQ offenses at schools further, the most common were those involving a mixed group of LGBTQ individuals (342) and those against gay men (306). 

Educational settings were divided into three categories in the report: “college/university,” “elementary/secondary” and “unspecified school/college.” More than half of all hate crime offenses reported in an educational setting took place at an elementary or secondary school, with a combined total of 2,815 from 2018-2022. The most common offense at schools was intimidation, followed by what the study grouped as “destruction/damage/vandalism and “simple assault.”

In the FBI’s most recent overall hate crimes report, the same three groups were found to be the most common targets. More than half of race-based crimes in 2022 targeted Black people, and more than half of religious-based crimes targeted Jews. The data also pointed to a nearly 40% increase in anti-transgender crimes compared to the prior year.

Experts have long cautioned that hate crimes tend to go unreported by victims and local law enforcement. 

Although not included in the FBI’s school hate crime report, over the last year there have been several high-profile hate crimes in the U.S.

In July, O’Shae Sibley, a professional dancer and choreographer, was stabbed to death in what police later said was an anti-gay hate crime. In the weeks following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death in his Illinois home by his landlord, who was accused of being motivated by hate. In Jacksonville, Florida, a white gunman opened fire in a Dollar General store last summer, killing three Black people. And in December, a man was indicted on multiple hate crime charges in connection with the punching of an Israeli tourist in Times Square two months earlier.

The Pentagon is stepping up its efforts to help gay and lesbian veterans who were discharged from the U.S. military under the now-defunct “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy update their records. 

New initiatives announced Wednesday, the 12th anniversary of the policy’s 2011 repeal, include a proactive review process of the records of dismissed veterans and the launch of a new webpageaggregating resources for LGBTQ people who served in the armed forces.

The Defense Department will independently identify veterans who were discharged from active duty between 1994 and 2011 — when the policy was in effect — because of their sexual orientation and who received a discharge that was less than honorable, the department said at a media roundtable Wednesday. The department will retrieve any relevant military records pertaining to those veterans and submit them for a potential correction. The updated policy was first reported by CBS News. 

“Over the past decade, we’ve tried to make it easier for Service members discharged based on their sexual orientation to obtain corrective relief,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statementWednesday. “While this process can be difficult to navigate, we are working to make it more accessible and efficient.” 

Prior to Wednesday’s announcements, veterans dismissed under “don’t ask, don’t tell” could only update their records by submitting an application and documents relevant to their service in order to receive a discharge upgrade. Some veterans have also hired attorneys and scheduled in-person hearings to assist their cases. 

In addition to the new “proactive review” process, the department will still accept individual applications. The Pentagon, however, will be “redoubling our outreach to LGBTQ+ veterans discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to encourage anyone who might be eligible to apply for corrections to their military records,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said at a news conference. “This outreach campaign will be online, by email, by mail, through nonprofits and veterans service organizations and more.” 

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment. 

There are different types of punitive and administrative military discharges, and those who receive anything other than an honorable discharge may be ineligible to receive some military benefits. In 2021, the Department of Veterans Affairs issued a clarificationconfirming that veterans dismissed for their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status were eligible to apply for benefits including health care and home loan guarantees. 

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and was repealed by President Barack Obama. The policy was intended to allow gay, lesbian and bisexual people to serve in the military as long as they hid their sexual orientation.  

An estimated 13,000 service members were discharged under the policy, but the number of LGBTQ service members dismissed for their sexual orientations or gender identities since World War II is thought to be at least 100,000, according to historians. 

In July 2017, several years after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” President Donald Trump announced that transgender people would be prohibited from enlisting in the military. The ban, which took effect in April 2019, reversed a policy announced in 2016 by the Obama administration. However, during President Joe Biden’s first week in office, he repealed the Trump administration’s ban, allowing transgender service members to once again enlist in the military and serve openly. 

“Polysexual,” “amalgagender” and “gay marry” are among the new words and phrases added to Dictionary.com this year, in a revision that also included the removal of gendered pronouns from hundreds of definitions, the company announced Wednesday. 

The online dictionary added 566 new words, many of which relate to identity and relationships, pop culture and artificial intelligence. Several new words describing identity and relationships involve the LGBTQ community.  

“Gender and identity have been particularly dynamic, and productive areas of language change in the past 15 years or so,” John Kelly, vice president of editorial at Dictionary.com, told NBC News. “Whether it be socially or medically, there is a vocabulary component that is emerging, breaking through into the mainstream, that people need to know that they’re going to encounter.” 

Amalgagender, one of the new words, refers to the gender identity of some intersex people. Polyromantic is a person romantically attracted to people of various genders, and polysexual is a person sexually attracted to people of various genders. 

Kelly said the company uses four criteria to determine whether a word should be added to its dictionary: “Is it widely used, does it have shared meaning, does it demonstrate staying power and is it going to be useful for a general audience.”  

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More than 2,000 definitions of existing words have also been revised, and about 400 of these were updated to either replace or remove gendered pronouns, Kelly said. 

“Not only does ‘him or her’ reduce the options in the example to a binary gender, but it also is harder to read and understand,” Kelly said. 

One of the updated definitions is for the word “volunteer,” which went from, “A person who voluntarily offers himself or herself for a service or undertaking” to, “A person who offers to perform a service or undertaking.” 

“We don’t go about our lives going, ‘Hey, I’m looking for some volunteers, you know, someone who offers himself or herself to do that.’ That construction is cumbersome and exclusive and we were overdue to make that change across our dictionary,” Kelly said. 

Resistance toward the use of transgender and nonbinary people’s preferred pronouns and a rise in anti-LGBTQ legislation nationwide have created a tense dialogue surrounding language used by LGBTQ people and allies.  

“Language really is a lightning rod,” Kelly said. “All of a sudden it can feel, when these new words get announced, that there’s an agenda behind it. I want to be clear: There isn’t an agenda; there is documentation.” 

This documentation, he added, shows that language is in fact changing.

“Whether we like it or not, whether we agree with it or not, whether it’s our personal views or not,” he said, “it’s our job to be a service to people to capture that language as objectively as possible.” 

The company has added dozens of new words and phrases that relate to the LGBTQ community in recent years. “Demisexual,” “neopronoun” and “aromantic” were among last year’s new additions. 

Adding new words and updating definitions is standard practice among prominent dictionary publishers. Major dictionaries including the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Macmillan English Dictionary and Collins English Dictionary frequently publish updated versions. 

The effort to diversify dictionary editions has also been widespread in the industry. Last year, Oxford University Press announced it would publish its first “Oxford Dictionary of African American English” edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr.