An Open Letter To Queer Artists

We did it before, and we can do it again!

Hello, my dear hearts,

So President Trump has taken control of all federal arts programs, including the National Endowments for Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, as well The Kennedy Center. Ah damn. He is defunding “woke” artists, and the venues who produce and present us. Furthermore, he is directing all 2026 federal arts funding only to artists and art spaces that depict and/or praise the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Sadly, none of this is new, my darling. All of this has happened before.

Back in 1991, a Senator from North Carolina named Jesse Helms pushed an honest-to-god law through that specifically defunded sex and gender outlaw artists. Addressing the Senate, Helms said our art was “patently offensive.” His bill prohibited the National Endowment for the Arts from using any of its funds to “promote or disseminate materials that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual or excretory activities or organs."

(Excretory? Well yes there was some pee and poo in a couple of our performance art pieces back then. And really, why not?)

Particularly hard hit were arts venues that presented and produced queer art. Surprisingly, there were quite a few of those. In the late 1980s and 90s, there was a string of about a dozen non-profit theaters and performance spaces called The Purple Circuit. They all welcomed queer theater, performance, spoken word, and dance. Before the defunding of queer arts, you could book your tour at multiple venues, and tour your queer, freaky, uncensored art cross country. Venues paid us a small lump sum, enough to cover our travel and room and board. On top of that, we’d split ticket sales with the venue. In that way, we could count on making enough money to pay the rent back home. And the venues made enough off of us to justify booking and promoting more and more queer and freaky artists. It was a cozy relationship! But when the NEA was defunded, our ability to tour and those theaters’ ability to support our work… well, it all dried up.

In response, queer and other outlaw artists from all over the country gathered to protest. Coming together, we cross-pollinated our work. We learned new stuff from each other, and we adapted. It was expensive to tour shows with lots of actors. and big sets, so we wrote ourselves solo pieces that we could perform on a bare stage. Venues couldn’t cover our expenses, but they agreed to give us a bigger cut of ticket sales. If we needed sets, costumes, and props, they had to fit in one suitcase. While more and more of us were touring the country like this, behind  the scenes, legal maneuvers were being taken, and in 1993, four defunded queer performance artists—Holly Hughes, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Karen Finley—sued Jesse Helms and the federal government. The case went up to the Supreme Court. Queer artists everywhere banned together to cheer them on. The “NEA Four” as they become known, were a rallying cry to queer art. Annnnnnd… they lost, 8-1.

And y’know what? That didn’t stop any of us from making more and more work, which honestly is the point of all this. And so, you see? Happy endings can happen even when it looks really bleak. Like it’s looking right now. I posted the following as a note a few weeks ago, and it’s well worth repeating here.

I was speaking with bestie Sandy Stone, and the subject of the stupid fucking war on trans came up, and wise old Sandy said, “My take on all this is we took ten steps forward, now we’re going to be beaten six steps back, which means we only get to be four steps forward, but in the real world that’s how you advance.  My two rules are 1) nothing is as bad as it looks; 2) nothing is as good as it looks. We have out trans people in public office, we have trans medicine, we have trans scholarship, we have trans attorneys.  We’re not going away.”

Right?

So my darling, please keep making your art—I promise, it’s gonna be the best and most important stuff you’ve ever made. And you will find the funds to keep on living and making your art, just like we did, all those years ago. Together, we’ve got this. Do let me know if there’s anything I can do to help boost your queer and outlaw signal.

kisses,

Auntie Kate

—-

Correction: In an earlier version of this post, I mistakenly said that the NEA Four had won their SCOTUS case. I honestly remembered them having won, but I was wrong. Ah, the curse of an optimistic memory. Thanks to Karen Finley and Holly Hughes for reminding me of the real outcome.