© Scott SuchmanThe John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in better days
The events were part of the Kennedy Center's "Tapestry of Pride" programming, which had been scheduled to coincide with this summer's World Pride festival celebrating LGBTQ rights, the Associated Press reported on Friday.
A June 5 performance at the venue was abruptly canceled within days of Trump's Feb. 7 Truth Social post announcing leadership changes at the cultural institution, Michael Roest, founder and director of the International Pride Orchestra, said.
"They went from very eager to host to nothing," Roest said. "We have not since heard a word from anybody at the Kennedy Center, but that's not going to stop us."
Roest noted that he subsequently secured a venue in nearby Bethesda, Md., for his orchestra to play during Pride Month.
Monica Alford, the organizer of a 2024 Kennedy Center rooftop drag brunch, also said the center ceased communicating with her about a planned June 8 event shortly after Trump's takeover.
The now-canceled event was "meant to be family-friendly, just like the drag brunch was family-friendly and classy and sophisticated," Alford said.
"We're doing our community a disservice — not just the queer community but the entire community," she argued.
Washington's Capital Pride Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to organizing LGBTQ pride festivities, has disassociated itself from the Kennedy Center in the wake of the cancellations.
"We are a resilient community, and we have found other avenues to celebrate,"June Crenshaw, deputy director of the alliance, said. "We are finding another path to the celebration ... but the fact that we have to maneuver in this way is disappointing."
Roest also indicated that absent "a very, very public statement of inclusivity from the administration," he and other LGBTQ performers would likely no longer consider performing at the Kennedy Center.
In February, as part of an effort to make the Kennedy Center "GREAT AGAIN," Trump removed several individuals from the center's board of trustees and installed himself as the chairman.
The president, 78, argued that the old board members "do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture" and slammed previous LGBTQ-related programming that took place at the Kennedy Center.
"Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP," Trump wrote on Truth Social in February. "The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!"
The Pride Month cancellations follow Hamilton producers Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeffrey Seller announcing in March that they pulled the plug on an upcoming run of shows of the hit Broadway musical at the Kennedy Center over Trump's takeover of the performing arts venue.
The Kennedy Center did not respond to The Post's request for comment.
Reader Comments
Where do you live? I live in Everett, WA.
What do you do for a living? I do exterior house cleaning. Clean gutters, roofs, windows, siding etc.
Tell me about yourself MrPresident. How long have you been a visitor to this site? I’ve been visiting here since 2004. Didn’t really start commenting regularly until Covid. I have a wife and two kids. A six your old daughter and a fifteen year old son. I’ve lived in Washington almost exclusively. I’m 42 years old. 5’10”. 190 pounds. Blond hair. Blue eyes.
I find the anonymity the internet fosters frustrating. How do you know you’re talking to someone real? How do you know they’re not a fraud?How do you know they’re even human? I welcome you to join me in providing intimate details of your existence as I have to you. Because this place has changed. Something doesn’t smell right. So what I’m going to do is that anytime I see you post in any article I’m going to paste this comment as a reply to it in the hopes that you join me in attempting to prove you’re actually a real person.
Just enrage and derail.
Our best option is to just ignore the
personthing.Although the bot's previous moniker was "McSnacks" - now it's "MrPresident". Do you recognize a pattern here ?!?
I have outed myself over many posts, i am an Irish Canadian from Ontario , born and raised here.
🇨🇦 Election proved the boomers here hate Trump more than they love CANADA.
Hopefully the minority govt won’t last long, two years usually.
PP not getting his seat was very weird, as well as 90 people on his ballot for Carlton. That should be investigated but won’t be.
Talk about taking votes away from candidates, that was the complaint about Max Berniers party the CCP, that they were splitting* the conservative vote.
Really the Libs are now the NDP socialists, but won’t admit it, the Conservatives are old Liberal party ideologies, and the CCP should be able to grab all those faux conservative voters.
The Sikh run NDP is done, the once proud Social Credit party of Saskatoon that Elons moms dad was a founder of , morphed into the NDP, and then morphed into oblivion.
All their hardworking labour people started feeding at the govt handouts trough when Bob Rae won the Ontario election in 87? And they never regrouped recovered from that debacle properly.
fun time to be alive in 🇨🇦.
Everyone gets the same rights. That's what makes it a fair society. Your rights don't trump anyone else's because their rights makes you uncomfortable.
What are you talking about? There are literally thousands of strip clubs across the US. Go to Vegas and you will see tons of "flamboyant sexual straight parties half naked and whipping each other." Thats not even mentioning beauty pageants that have half naked adults, teens, and children competing in them.
You are extremely gullible if you believe that there are or ever could be enough illegals voting to change an election. For one thing they are terrified of risking any kind of interactions with the government. That's why they don't call for police services when in trouble and why they don't go to hospitals when injured.
Monica Alford doesn't seem to realise in her fog of DEI that her community isn't the public, but a tiny majority of fringe fetish loving exhibitionists.
They have had their moment in the sun and will now return to the fringes because everyone has seen and heard enough. When the money drys up we won't see many of these doctrine peddlers for dust.