The organizers of an LGBTQ film festival in Phoenix have canceled the annual event “in direct response” to President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs at publicly funded institutions. The nonprofit Desperado LGBTQ+ Film Festival is hosted by a student organization at Paradise Valley Community College, which receives federal funds. The festival’s mission, according to its website, is to showcase quality films that are related to the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community.” The festival was first held in 2009, and the most recent edition — which included seven feature films and seven shorts — was in January. “As a publicly funded institution, we must comply with these orders,” the festival’s organizers said in a statement on its website. “Failure to do so would jeopardize the district’s federal funding, including student financial aid and grants that support over 300 positions across our campuses. The loss of such funding would create a ripple effect, significantly affecting students, faculty, staff, the community, and the educational services we provide.”Trump’s DEI-related executive order called for terminating diversity, equity and inclusion mandates, policies programs, preferences and activities in the federal government, describing such measures as “discriminatory.”In its “Trump Accountability Tracker,” the LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD asserts that the DEI-related order is one of more than 300 anti-LGBTQ actions during the second Trump administration. Others on GLAAD’s list include the elimination of the 988 suicide hotline for LGBTQ youths, the removal of transgender service members from the military and the renaming of a Navy vessel named for gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk. The Trump administration did not answer specific questions about the cancellation of the film festival and GLAAD’s anti-LGBTQ action list, but a White House spokesperson said in an email that Trump’s “reelection and the overall MAGA movement is a big tent welcome for all and home to a large swath of the American people.”“The American people voted for a return to common sense, and the President is delivering on every campaign promise supported by 77 million voters and is ushering in our Golden Age,” the spokesperson, Harrison Fields, said in the email. In the statement on its website, the film festival organizers said they are “heartbroken” by the cancellation of their annual event.“We hope this is not a farewell but a momentary pause,” they said. “We look forward to the possibility of resuming the festival when conditions allow.”
LGBTQ festival canceled after 16 years due to Trump DEI order, organizers say
