Tavish Forsyth had come to a conclusion: They could not work for President Donald Trump.

So the 32-year-old Baltimore resident stripped down, turned on their camera and lit their career on fire.

“F—— Donald Trump and f—— the Kennedy Center,” a naked Forsyth, an associate artistic lead at the Washington National Opera’s Opera Institute, which is run by the Kennedy Center, said in a video that went viral. The board of the nation’s leading cultural institution had elected Trump just weeks prior as its chairman after he gutted the board of members appointed by his predecessor, President Joe Biden.

The 35-minute protest video uploaded to YouTube in March was an unequivocal response from Forsyth, a queer artist and educator who uses they/them pronouns, against what they see as the president’s continued attacks against LGBTQ+ people and diversity, equity and inclusion programs. In it, they admit the video, on its face, seems like a mistake due to the inevitable consequences — before doubling down.

“I do not believe in hiding when I have the power to be seen,” they say.

Making the video “was not an overnight decision, but the more deeply I meditated on it, the more obvious it became to me that this [job] was not in alignment with who I am and what I do,” said Forsyth, whose genitals in the video are covered with a rainbow heart emoji. “It was non-negotiable.”

If the point of a protest is to gain attention, then Forsyth’s efforts were objectively effective. Their nude monologue was covered by the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, HuffPost, NBC4 Washington, OK! Magazine and other outlets.

Less than 24 hours after the video was published, Forsyth was fired by the Kennedy Center, which also downsized its Social Impact initiative and laid off affiliated employees days later. A week after the Kennedy Center dismissal, Forsyth said, the Johns Hopkins University fired them from their faculty role in the Carey Business School without explanation.

Despite the turmoil and the loss of income — $16,000 between their contract jobs at Johns Hopkins and the Kennedy Center, they said — Forsyth regrets nothing. Now, they’re speaking out against actions they view as retaliatory capitulation.

“I see my termination from Johns Hopkins as an act of homophobia and as complicity with a political regime that is silencing marginalized voices and hurting marginalized communities,” said Forsyth, who is also the artistic director of Bird City Improv.

Tim Parsons, director of communications for the Carey Business School, confirmed that Forsyth is no longer an employee but declined to answer further questions. “We do not comment on personnel matters,” he wrote in an email.

The Kennedy Center did not respond to a request for comment, though Roma Daravi, the organization’s vice president of public relations, described the video as “extremely disturbing considering this individual worked with minors” to the Times, which first reported the firing. The YouTube video features only Forsyth.

Forsyth said they expected the terminations, given the current political climate, which has seen Trump criticize the Kennedy Center’s “woke” programming and his administration freeze billions in grants to elite universities over campus activism.

So why did Forsyth go nude? For one, they said, nudity is no stranger to protest, as it disrupts social norms. The decision was also a rebuke of Trump’s declaration of “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA” at the Kennedy Center.

It’s why, toward the start of the video, Forsyth sheds their clothes at the snap of their fingers after quoting RuPaul: “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag.” But YouTube itself took issue with the content, too. They removed the video and took down Forsyth’s channel, citing a violation of the company’s “sex and nudity policy,“ which doesn’t permit “content with nudity that’s meant to be sexually gratifying,” according to screenshots shared with The Banner.

Forsyth, who re-edited the video to further blur out their genitals and uploaded it to another channel in early April, called YouTube’s reasoning “utterly ridiculous because nothing about my video was intended to be sexual or is sexually gratifying in any way.”

This week, YouTube seemingly reconsidered its stance. Company spokesman Boot Bullwinkle said in an email that while there were instances where Forsyth “was exposed despite obvious efforts to obscure the nudity,” YouTube would make the original video public again if it were re-edited to avoid these instances. YouTube also reinstated Forsyth’s channel following “an overenforcement by an agent.”

Speaking out has come at an admittedly self-inflicted cost. After Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, a new Kennedy Center board member appointed by Trump, criticized Forsyth and implied on her program that they were a “groomer,” they began to receive ”hate speech and harassment” online, including threats of being doxxed, Forsyth said. That led to heightened anxiety, panic attacks and an eventual move out of Baltimore. (Forsyth declined to say where they are living now.)

Despite their safety feeling threatened, Forsyth believes now is not the time to be silent. They view Trump’s overhaul of the Kennedy Center and elimination of DEI programs as an attack against everyone.

“I wanted to be very clear in my protest that this is not a queer issue,” Forsyth said. “This is a human issue because people have been experiencing violence, bigotry and discrimination from all walks of life.”

That emphasis on inclusivity aligns with the person Tamara “Blue” Cavell-Allette has grown close to in recent years. The adjunct theatre arts professor at Morgan State University has worked with Forsyth on a number of projects, including a play at the Kennedy Center.

She was not surprised they took such a bold approach in advocating for marginalized artists.

“When Tavish sees someone in their community not being treated well, this is how we move as people,” Cavell-Allette said. ”It’s not performative.”

This experience has crystallized Forsyth’s career path moving forward: They plan to fully pursue art activism by writing poetry and continuing to help grassroots groups organize and build their communities. After all of this, they plan to leave the United States to do it.

Wherever the location, they plan to be heard, loud and clear.

“I refuse to go quietly into a future where the people I love cannot feel free and safe and live lives of dignity,” Forsyth said.

This article has been updated to correct one pronoun error.