Just a few weeks after the late Senator of South Carolina ……Lindsay Graham ….is laid to rest in his grave the state’s Arts Commission (SCAC) announced it removed funding from just two of the nearly 180 arts organizations that it supports, both of which have an LGBTQ+ focus,
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.”
There was no mention if this was to honor the memory of the late (unmarried) Senator who had a long, conservative voting record that consistently opposed major LGBTQ+ and gay rights legislation
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 .”
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. ”
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
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.
Lindsay aka Lady Graham, must be turning over in his grave
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