Earlier this month, Chicago's Henry Gerber House, a starting point for the gay rights movement in the United States, was designated a National Historic Landmark by Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, making it the second such LGBT heritage site to be landmarked in the United States (after New York's Stonewall Inn). But that's far from the only such site on the radar of the Rainbow Heritage Network, a group trying to gain recognition and most importantly, protection, for the nation's LGBTQ history.
A coalition of more than 400 preservationists and gay rights activists, Rainbow Heritage, which started in January, has begun to push for preservation on a national level. According to one of the founders, Mark Meinke, who also worked with the Rainbow History Network, preserving LGBTQ sites on a local, state and federal level presents its own unique challenges.