When South Carolina's arts board voted to pull the Greenville Gay Men's Chorus's state funding, the chorus asked the public to cover the $40,000 instead, and the public gave more than $42,000. The South Carolina Arts Commission funds more than 170 arts groups. This year it singled out just two, the chorus and an LGBTQ theater company in Spartanburg, and made them prove their "artistic merit" before voting 5-3 to deny them both. Emails released to the ACLU show what some commissioners actually objected to. One wrote that state money should not go to "organizations structured around specific sexual orientations, nor should public funds support drag performances." "They made the wrong decision," executive director Mary Adam told the LGBTQ+ magazine Them. "There's no reason to have singled us out and discriminated against us." The chorus says the money will keep it performing for the next few years. Days after the vote, the commission's chair, Flavia Harton, stepped down, citing personal reasons