When Mark McCrary first participated in a gay men’s chorus, he cried.

He came out as gay later in life. The chorus offered him a safe space to perform, in a way few places had.

“For the first time, it was a sense of community,” McCrary said. “I was safe — which lends itself to being a better singer.”

He now works as the executive director for the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus.

As President Donald Trump’s administration has started cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights, queer performing groups across the country have said they’re no longer taking that safety for granted.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts recently canceled a Pride event that included the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington performing with the National Symphony Orchestra. The cancellation spurred backlash from LGBTQ+ choruses across the country. The center’s board unanimously appointed Trump as the chair of the national cultural center for the United States.

In a statement, National Symphony Orchestra Director Jean Davidson denied that the decision to postpone the performance stemmed from its LGBTQ+ content, and that it was “due to financial and scheduling factors.”

But gay men’s choruses are sounding the alarm, including in Portland. McCrary said news of the cancellation came as a shock.

“The optics of all this just look very bad,” he said. “We’re beginning to see a trend toward silencing the queer community.”

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McCrary said he talks regularly with other choir executive directors, many of whom have started to worry for the safety of their members. Some performances have been picketed by protesters, and some performers have received death threats. The personal safety of their choruses is something they’ve only had to plan for within the past couple of months, he said.

LGBTQ+ choruses — serving gay, lesbian, and trans people, and more — have been a fixture in queer culture since appearing in the late 1970s. At that time, they were very politically active, organizing against widespread discrimination and for increased treatment of HIV/AIDS, said Braeden Ayres, artistic director of the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus.

“It gave us a literal voice,” Ayres said. “I think it’s more important than ever that we speak out against these injustices.”

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He said he believes many choruses will become more politically vocal in the coming years, as the visibility of LGBTQ+ people becomes a wider issue.

And it happens that the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus, the Portland Lesbian Choir and the Rose City Pride Bands are planning a joint concert — the first collaboration of its kind for these groups — at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on March 20.

The concert had been in the work for months, but McCrary said it’s taken on new meaning, given the political climate.

“The sense of solidarity now is so much more pronounced because of the things going on, even in the state of Oregon,” McCrary said. “It seems to be terribly prescient.”

Much of the concert has already been planned, but organizers are discussing ways to visually represent the solidarity at the heart of the performance.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/02/22/portland-gay-men-chorus-kennedy-center-cancellation/