Dispute over removal of Kansas City gay history exhibit from Missouri Capitol continues – KMBC Kansas City

The dispute over how the state displays an exhibit about Kansas City’s gay history continues. The display was recently pulled from the state capitol’s museum.Originally, the exhibit was in the state capitol’s Museum of Missouri History. After some complaints last week, it was moved to another, less prominent building.”And there is a direct line from those individuals in the 1960s to me representing Kansas City as an openly gay man in 2021,” said state Sen. Greg Razer.”It has nothing to do with the issue at hand,” Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said.”It sure feels like it to some folk,” KMBC’s Micheal Mahoney said.”Well, maybe so, but it didn’t. It doesn’t matter what the cause was. We have just never allowed that before in the museum section of that,” Parson said.He said those displays are often in the capitol’s first-floor rotunda. Razer said the claim that the display was put there without prior approval, rings hollow. Records for the governing board show no exhibits ever get prior approval before display.”Either stand by the precedent the board has set and put the display back up or, if the governor is right, everything in the museum has to come out until such time they can get together and approve each individual item,” Razer said.”And I think even with the media reports that this hasn’t been done for five or 12 years, or whatever, it’s because we’ve never allowed it in there before. There’s never been an issue about that before,” Parson said.The top Democrat in the Missouri House, state Rep. Crystal Quade, of Springfield, wrote a scathing letter to Dru Buntin, the director of the Department of Natural Resources.”Lies tend to ensnare those who tell them into a trap of their own making,” Quade wrote.”You and Gov. Mike Parson are caught in such a trap concerning your false justification for recently removing a LBGTQ history exhibit from the Missouri State Museum in the Capitol and later relocating it to a separate but unequal space blocks away.”Parson told KMBC there is a process to determine what exhibits are placed in the state museum. Oftentimes, he said that other displays are placed on the first-floor rotunda in the center of the Capitol building. The governor said the general counsel attorneys are looking at the situation. This dispute is not over. In fact, it will probably come up soon when the Legislature returns for a brief session in a few days.