South Carolina pulls funds from just two out of 180 arts orgs: a gay men’s chorus and an LGBTQ+ theater company

This story originally appeared on Them.

The South Carolina Arts Commission (SCAC) removed funding from just two of the nearly 180 arts organizations that it supports, both of which have an LGBTQ+ focus, per the Charleston-based newspaper The Post and Courier.

At a meeting held on August 20, the board of the state government agency revisited a vote that it had delayed since June to approve $3.7 million in grants to 180 arts organizations; however, during the meeting, the commission voted to fund all the groups once again except for two — the Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus and the Proud Mary Theater Company, based in Spartanburg — claiming that they need to prove their “artistic merit.”

Per the newspaper, the commission changed its reasoning for denying funds from being “structured around specific sexual orientations” to lacking “artistic merit” after it received a letter from the South Carolina ACLU in mid-August.

However, in emails obtained through a public records request by the Post and Courier that were reported in June, board member Jessica Rourke told interim commission director Ashley Kerns Brown and former director David Platts that she would not fund “organizations structured around specific sexual orientations, nor should public funds support drag performances.”

Though South Carolina itself has not passed a ban on drag performance, its legislature did consider one in 2024. Over a dozen states have weighed such legislation but only two have successfully banned drag performances directly, with four additional states passing laws around “adult” performances that could be construed to target drag shows, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

Another SCAC board member, Russell “Rip” Parks, espoused a similar sentiment to Rourke in an email to Brown and Platts.

“While these organizations have every right to promote their agendas privately, it is not the role of a state funded agency to promote them,” Parks wrote, per the emails obtained by the Post and Courier.

Lee Snelgrove, a former director of South Carolina-based arts nonprofit One Columbia, told the Post and Courier that the emails prove board members are prioritizing personal beliefs over the arts.

“Those emails specifically… pointed out to me that those commissioners do’'t really see the mission and vision of the Arts Commission in the same way that the arts organizations, and the arts community that worked hard to develop that mission with the commission staff see it,” Snelgrove said. “[It] feels very similar to when commissions have appointees that are there for specific political reasons, and they sort of enforce those political reasons.” He added that the decision “undermines” the commission’s work.

The August 20 SCAC meeting reportedly began with a closed executive session during which the board met behind closed doors for 45 minutes. They returned with a drafted resolution that said, “No person or entity that receives grant funding from the Commission shall, in any work funded in whole or in part by grant funds administered by or received from the Commission, promote any ideology without regard to what that ideology might be,” per the Post and Courier.

While the vote, which passed 5-2, withheld crucial funding from these two groups, it also raised suspicions among local arts advocates that the group’s decision was a pointed jab at the LGBTQ+ community.

“They’re forcing explicitly LGBTQ organizations to do more work to prove themselves than any other organization,” Ed Madden, the former poet laureate for the city of Columbia, told the Post and Courier. “That in itself is discriminatory.”

Jeff Robinson, executive director of nonprofit arts coalition South Carolina Arts Alliance, also expressed uncertainty around why these two LGBTQ+ groups must “re-prove” their merit.

“The organizations have already proven their artistic merit through a rigorous grant application process,” Robinson said. “Why was this process good enough to approve nearly 200 other organizations while these two specifically require further review?”

As of this writing, both programs have reportedly been told that they have to defend their merit by the committee’s upcoming October 15 meeting, but have not received instructions on how they can comply — and in what way they must prove their merit.

Of the $3.7 million allotted to 180 arts organizations, the Proud Mary Theatre Company was set to receive only $2,063 in grants and $1,803 in “bridge funds,” or money meant to cover short-term needs, which represents less than 1% of the total grant funds.

Sally McClellan, the secretary and grants coordinator for Proud Mary Theater Company, decried the decision to the Post and Courier.

“Estimates are that there are about 200,000 queer people in our state, all of whom would be taxpayers,” McClellan said.

The Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus was set to receive $13,050 of the total grant money, also under 1% of total funding.

“The idea that legislators can hand-pick certain art to put in or take out is unconstitutional and illegal, and starts to create this scenario where the only art that can be supported is the art deemed appropriate by the state,” Mary Adam, the executive director of the Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus, told the Post and Courier.

To help address the upcoming shortfall, the Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus has set up a GoFundMe, which has raised over $10,000 of its $13,000 goal as of Monday morning.

“This treatment is not only unfair and discriminatory, it is illegal,” the Chorus said of the committee’s decision. “Public arts funding should be based on the quality and impact of an organization’s work — not on whether it serves or is created by the LGBTQ+ community. The ACLU of South Carolina has also raised concerns about the Commission’s actions and the new resolution it adopted addressing ‘ideology’ in grant-funded work.”

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