This Stonewall Pioneer Slams Ken Burns' Documentary "The American Revolution"

In the 1970s, I launched a campaign to end LGBTQ+ invisibility on television. Years later, that mission to show the public who we were expanded to another arena we'd long been written out of: American History. Just as television producers ignored us, so too had historians. Sadly, such erasure is happening again today, this time because of both the glaring absence and defamatory framing of LGBTQ+ people in Ken Burns' new PBS documentary "The American Revolution." How can LGBTQ+ people be both omitted and defamed in the documentary? Simple: the use of age-old stereotypes.

After a friend informed me a few weeks ago that Burns' documentary portrayed Revolutionary War General Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben in a disingenuous and harmful way, I promptly reached out to both Terry Gross of NPR and the Museum of the American Revolution, who both had scheduled events with Burns, and soon after got a call from Burns' team, led by Burns co-directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt. We met on Zoom, they shared the relevant clip with me (which was, indeed, disingenuous and harmful), and I explained why their portrayal of von Steuben was historically thin and reinforced harmful tropes.

It is often difficult for heterosexual historians to fully appreciate how LGBTQ+ people have been labeled throughout history. From my conversation with Burns' team over the last month, it seems we agreed that most credible historians now accept that Baron von Steuben would be considered a gay man by today's understanding. That is never mentioned in the documentary. They risk erasing the fact that a gay man played a significant and indispensable role in founding this nation. Yet in Burns' documentary, the only reference to his sexuality is a single line: "he took familiarities with boys." That claim is misleading, damaging, and more harmful than if he'd just kept von Steuben in the closet. It reinforces the dangerous idea that all gay people are pedophiles.

That line, which the producers believe to be "fact," is based on a single rumor from a religious order with whom von Steuben had political conflict. Historians have often repeated it not because it is well-founded, but because it conveniently fits the long history of how gay men have been smeared through innuendo. In my correspondence with Paul Lockheart, who authored the definitive von Steuben biography "The Drillmaster of Valley Forge," he told me he didn't believe those rumors to be true. Even more institutions, including the Smithsonian, have called the rumors unproven and anonymously reported.

If Burns' film fully accepts the allegation, made in 1777, at face value, the logic becomes absurd: it would require the viewer to believe Benjamin Franklin knowingly sent a pedophile to George Washington to train our troops. Franklin was many things, but he was not a fool.

His note to George Washington reads:

"Sir,

I beg leave to recommend to your Excellency the Baron de Steuben, a gentleman of rank and military experience, who served for many years with great reputation in the Prussian Army under the King of Prussia. His zeal for our cause has brought him from Europe at his own expense, with a desire to offer his services to the United States.

I make no doubt his knowledge and discipline will be of great use in forming our troops. I therefore take the liberty to recommend him to your Excellency's attention and favorable notice.

With great respect,

B. Franklin"

Franklin's letter — along with the writings of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson— all portray von Steuben as a man of extraordinary integrity and a true hero of the Revolution. None of that balance or historical nuance appears in Burns' series.

Sadly, I've seen this kind of distortion before. More than fifteen years ago, during a televised debate on LGBTQ+ equality, an opponent leaned across the set and snarled at me: "This country was not founded for people like you." I answered that one of the men who helped found this nation was "like me," General von Steuben. By then I had already spent years researching and writing about him. One of my lines has been repeated so often it's practically folklore: Benjamin Franklin sending von Steuben to the Continental Congress made Franklin the father of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

In Burns' portrayal of the Revolution, LGBTQ+ people are not only erased but defamed, reduced to a caricatured trope instead of being recognized as real participants in shaping our country's history. And this type of omission is not new in his documentary work.

In his 2014 series "The Roosevelts," he faced criticism from historians and LGBTQ+ advocates for omitting Eleanor Roosevelt's close and well-documented relationship with Lorena Hickok. In his 2017 documentary on the Vietnam War, there was no mention of Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, the most famous LGBTQ+ service member of that era and the poster figure for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," or any other LGBTQ+ veteran who served. Taken together, these choices form a troubling pattern: showing America that LGBTQ+ people don't exist.

Burns' documentary correctly highlights von Steuben's crucial role in transforming Washington's troops and helping win the war. But it ends that portrayal with the oldest, most dangerous stereotype used against gay men. That isn't history. That isn't education. It's a blatant disservice to the truth, to viewers, and to von Steuben's legacy. That's what I take away from "The American Revolution."

LGBTQ+ Americans have always been part of our nation's story. We're done being erased, sidelined, or misrepresented. And as long as documentaries, museums, and classrooms continue to perpetuate old myths, we will keep demanding the accuracy our history deserves.

Mark Segal is an American journalist. He is the founder and publisher of Philadelphia Gay News and has won numerous awards for his column "Mark My Words," including best column by The National Newspaper Association, Society of Professional Journalists, GLAAD, and The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.