No one is banning reenacting and any discussion of that happening is clearly misinformation. You can tell a lot about who posts and comments on these type of threads in argument of the changes because it's a strong indicator of one's disconnect with actual living history and demonstrates a high probably that one is a non participant.
The national park service adopted the same policy many decades ago yet some of the better living history programming I've been apart of is at national military parks. A state entity aligning their policy with the national park service isn't going to disappear living history, but will most likely only strengthen it for the better. I recently was invited to participate in a larger than normal 160th Gettysburg national event on private property this summer. When I found out that a living history event is going on at the national park the weekend before, I altered my plans because battles are not living history. I'd rather be a part of the battlefield walk and living history encampment at the park than participate in a farby battle.
Of all the things people can choose to try and recreate accurately, a force on force battle is at the bottom of the list. It's nearly impossible to accurately produce the numbers, movements, carnage, trauma, &ct. Then you have to be concerned with safety, something in my experience greatly lacking in almost every engagement that I've participated in, despite the copious lip service paid thereto. Furthermore, anyone who has ever beared witness to actual combat can tell you, it's not something you'd actually want to witness or repeat, and certainly not something to show the public at a public family event. This is the reason we have advisories for movies and TV programming who's not suffering from inaccuracies in demonstration of the actualities of war thanks to post editing and special effects, something cost prohibitive to large scale reenactments. Despite these limitations, the traditional inaccuracies of large scale battle reenactments, and the questionable appropriateness of doing so, it's amazingly always those who profess great strides in progressivism and accuracy in their portrayals that are the first to want to get right to the most inaccurate thing one can do.
Alternatively, what can be done accurately is much more various and easier to accomplish. 99 percent of any soldier's experience is the minutia of daily life, which is the actual story deserving to be told, but rarely understood by most hobbyists lacking the abilities to effectively engage a consuming public. If I'm the programming director at an historic site, I'm going to invite 5 living history educators that can effectively teach rather than 500 fudds just out to party and get their larp on. Accordingly, 99 percent of history is probably something having little to do with war. Civilian living historians have been continually marginalized though the decades and I find that unacceptable. That will continue to change for the better with these alterations of policy.
So in short, not only is this change of policy a move in the right direction, it will open up funding that will find it's way to improvements in living history programming. It's a movement that, as one who makes a living at public history, I can definitely stand behind.
