Art without freedom of expression is a commission at best, and censorship at its worst.
On Thursday, the ACLU, representing theater groups in New England and New York, filed a lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Arts, challenging its edict that grant applicants comply with Donald Trump’s executive orders by not promoting “gender ideology.”
By Friday, the NEA voluntarily agreed to remove the certification requirement that forced artists to pledge not to promote gender ideology. It’s a small win. But the NEA has not removed its new eligibility criteria, under which projects that seem to promote such beliefs will not receive funding.
Thus, the lawsuit continues. The ACLU is asking for a preliminary injunction on the funding restriction ahead of application deadlines. A March 18 hearing date has been set.
The plaintiffs: Rhode Island Latino Arts, The Theater Offensive, a Boston organization dedicated to arts by queer and trans people of color, National Queer Theater in New York, and Theater Communications Group, a national organization made up of more than 650 member theaters and organizations, and over 3,000 individual members.
“This is what the ancestors and the transcestors fought for,” said Giselle Byrd, executive director of The Theater Offensive, and a long-term recipient of NEA funding. “And it’s now our torch to carry.”
Byrd said Friday’s decision by the NEA is progress, but the fight is far from over.
“This is just the beginning. Censorship and erasure will not ever prevail,” Byrd said. “We will not compromise our humanity, hard as they will try. These requirements are illegal and unconstitutional.”
So, what is gender ideology? A phrase used with hateful intention to assert that LGBTQ+ people, specifically trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive folk, are a dangerous ideological movement. We’re using this term because it’s what the Trump administration is touting. The executive order, introduced Jan. 20, had immediate consequences.
The NEA, on Feb. 6, just ahead of 2026 Grants for Arts Projects deadlines, changed applicant rules, directly targeting DEI and gender ideology.
Plainly, there is an attempt here to deny the existence of trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive folk.
“This is a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, the First Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment,” Byrd said. “This is not what Congress intended when they created the NEA. The mission is to advance opportunities for arts and sustain an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States.”
Kenny Mascary, interim chief of the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture in Boston, said the arts “have long served as a powerful catalyst for community organization, civic engagement, and social change.”
Artistic expression, he said, “is deeply intertwined with the principles of free speech.”
“As a MOAC partner,” Mascary said, ”we support TTO through their creative works as they bring to life the values, experiences, and diverse perspectives that define our community. By fostering this kind of artistic freedom, we not only uplift voices but also strengthen the social and economic fabric of our city.”
What does it mean when we cower to executive orders that deny people their personhood? Who are we if we’re complicit in erasure masquerading as protections? Democracy and freedom should never be disposable.
Mercedes Loving-Manley, founder of PrideXtended, an organization dedicated to the wellbeing of Black LGBTQ+ people, centering the Black trans population, believes we have to work collectively.
“A good portion of the grant funding we receive is particularly for arts and culture, to foster space for joy, connection, learning, and preserving our historical record. The upside is times like this bring people a bit closer together. Our intention is to act with urgency 24/7; it is the foundation of our work, and in times like these our work is heightened. We are big on collaboration. We are stronger together.”
Even for artists and organizations who don’t receive federal funding, the NEA guidelines and Trump’s orders are startling.
Jean Dolin, founder of the Boston LGBTQ+ Museum of Art, History & Culture, said he’s grateful to the plaintiffs.
“The number one rule of the arts is to say something about the human experience. The arts really bear witness to human lives, how we experience it, how we love, how we fail. The arts are a tool for everyone and that’s why it has to be diverse. The United States and the world is a diverse place.”
The museum hasn’t benefited from NEA funding, and new guidelines would make it hard, but artists they work with are affected.
“We have a responsibility right now, especially the LGB to show up for the T, the trans community,” he said. “They are under-resourced, under-funded, and under-amplified. We have to help, through finance, through visibility, through community to help them get ahead in the workplace, in community, in the art space.”
These hurdles aren’t exclusive to the queer community. The NEA also issued DEI restrictions and pulled the plug on its Challenge America grants for underserved communities. Other organizations have taken up the fight to block those violations already.
From President Trump’s Kennedy Center takeover to the NEA’s restrictions, artistic expression is under attack.
John F. Kennedy himself knew, as a country, we should always protect creative liberty.
“I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist,” he said in a 1963 speech at Amherst College. “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”
In the arts, we can look to Shakespeare — or Christopher Marlowe — and be reminded of the men in drag playing femme-identifying characters.
“In a world in which we censor and erase trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive people, we create a world that is devoid of truth,” Byrd said. “We have, for centuries on end, existed and will continue to do so.”
Trump, last week, proclaimed this nation would be its best most free self. Byrd is motivated.
“When Trump said we would forge ‘the freest, most advanced, most dynamic and most dominant civilization ever to exist on the face of this Earth,’ well if that is what he decrees, who are we not to comply on our own terms?”
Artists, now is your time. Forge freedom. Forge it fiercely. Your president commands it.
This story has been updated to reflect that the NEA agreed Friday to remove the certification requirement that forced artists to check a box and pledge not to promote gender ideology.
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