The South Carolina Arts Commission refused to give the Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus $13,000. As of Tuesday, Oct. 27, the chorus’s GoFundMe had raised $43,585 from 489 donations, past its $40,000 goal.
That goal was not random. The chorus says losing state money means a $13,000 hole in its operating budget each year for three years, or almost $40,000. It passed that mark on Oct. 15, FOX Carolina reported. “Your generosity will help sustain our performances for the next few years,” the chorus told supporters.
How the SC Arts Commission Voted Against Two LGBTQ+ Groups
On Oct. 1, the commission’s board voted 5-3 to deny grants to the chorus and to Spartanburg’s Proud Mary Theatre Company, which had asked for just under $4,000. The vote came in a virtual meeting with no public comment, and no board member explained their vote, the SC Daily Gazette reported.
Both groups had been recommended by the commission’s independent review panel. Both got state grants last year without any fuss. More than 170 other arts groups split $3.7 million in grants this cycle, and the chorus and Proud Mary were the only two pulled out for extra review.
The five “no” votes came from Russell “Rip” Parks of Easley, Jessica Rourke of Columbia, Danielle Thompson of Sumter, and Linda Stern and Bhavna Vasudeva of Columbia.
The chorus, founded in 2011, has more than 35 singers. It asked for money to cover basics like show security, bookkeeping and storage. The grant panel scored it 91 out of 100 on artistic merit. Proud Mary wanted the money for two productions: “The Book of Merman,” a spoof of “The Book of Mormon,” and a Halloween revue called “Stage Frights.”
What Commissioners Wrote in Their June Emails
Board members didn’t say anything publicly at the meeting. But emails the ACLU of South Carolina obtained through a public records request show what two of them thought back in June. The ACLU published the messages from Parks and Rourke.
“While these organizations have every right to promote their agendas privately, it is not the role of a state funded agency to promote them. I cannot support these requests,” Parks wrote on June 12. “I could not defend these programs to concerned legislators who could pull funding for the entire Commission over support of these organizations.”
Rourke wrote the same day: “My decision is based on a personal and governance principle that commission funding should not be directed toward organizations structured around specific sexual orientations, nor should public funds support drag performances.” She didn’t say which performances she meant. Proud Mary held a drag show fundraiser in July.
At an Aug. 20 meeting, Parks moved to pull the two applications, saying the commission questioned “the artistic merit of these two programs.” The follow-up questions the groups got weren’t about art, though. The commission asked for line-item budgets, the names of everyone paid with grant money, and whether any of the money would go to programs in K-12 schools. Both groups said no.
At that same August meeting, the board also passed a resolution telling grant evaluators to “disfavor any projects that promote any ideology.” ACLU of South Carolina executive director Jace Woodrum called it vague and said that “if an arts commission doesn’t support art about ideas, it doesn’t support art at all.”
Greenville Chorus Director Mary Adam: “Blatant Bigotry”
Mary Adam, the chorus’s executive director, said she was “disappointed and stunned.” She told the SC Daily Gazette she thinks the only reason the chorus was denied is that its singers are gay, and called the decision “blatant bigotry.” When she offered the board more material on the chorus’s work, she said, the commission refused it.
In a statement on Instagram, the chorus said: “We believe this decision was discriminatory and unconstitutional. We are evaluating our legal options and intend to continue fighting this outcome.”
Matt Butler of the ACLU of South Carolina told the SC Daily Gazette: “Only these two groups are denied funding. Only these two are singled out, are made to jump through additional hoops.” The ACLU also sent the board a letter warning the decision might violate the First Amendment.
Some Republican lawmakers backed the vote. State Rep. April Cromer of Anderson, a House Freedom Caucus member who had called past grants to the chorus “appalling,” said in a statement published by FOX Carolina: “Calling this decision ‘homophobic’ is name-calling, not an argument.” Rep. Thomas Beach of Piedmont told the SC Daily Gazette, “There is no reason tax dollars should be spent on inappropriate art that is politically charged.” He didn’t say what he found inappropriate.
SC Arts Commission Chair, Commissioner and Interim Director Step Down
Within two weeks of the vote, the commission’s leadership thinned out. Chair Flavia Harton of Greenville, who didn’t vote because the chair only breaks ties, resigned citing her job and family. Parks resigned too, saying in his letter he couldn’t meet the “all-consuming time demands” ahead. Asked if the vote played a role, he told FOX Carolina, “No, actually it did not, no. It’s a time issue.” Interim director Ashley Brown also stepped down as director and returned to her deputy role, the SC Daily Gazette reported Oct. 15.
The board voted Oct. 15 not to elect a new chair and to share leadership instead. At that same meeting it unanimously turned down a $1,800 grant to Shakira Olivera-Bautista, a Mexican American painter and 2025 Furman University graduate whose work Parks called “pure political ideology.”
Gov. Henry McMaster, who appoints the board, said he likely won’t fill the seats before he leaves office in January, the SC Daily Gazette reported. “I wish they’d stayed, because they were good people,” he said.
When the Greenville Gay Men’s Chorus Performs Next
The chorus’s next concert, Merry & Bright, is Dec. 9 at 7 p.m. at Greenville Theatre. Proud Mary, which had raised close to $20,000 in donations by early October, according to FOX Carolina, performed “Stage Frights” in Spartanburg on Oct. 9 and 10.
The board’s next regular meeting is in February. By then, South Carolina will have a new governor, and filling the empty board seats will probably fall to that governor.
Related: How the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles Celebrated Bruce Vilanch’s LGBTQ+ Advocacy
