Catholic League, CongressionalAllies Push 'Sacrilegious' Video From

National Portrait Callery

B y R o b B o s t o n

Sometime around 1800,Spanish painter FranciscoJose de Goya completedwhat is considered one of his

greatest works: "The Naked Maja"depicts a young woman, completelynude, reclining on a couch.

The Spanish Inquisition was notimpressed with Goya's effort. In 1815,Roman Catholic clergy representingthe Inquisition - it existed until 1834- summoned the painter and de-manded to know who had commis-sioned this work, which they labeled"obscene." Not long after that, Goyalost his position as official painter tothe Spanish court.

It's not known what Goya told theInquisition, but history vindicated theartist. Today "The Naked Maja" is ondisplay at the Museo del Prado inMadrid and is considered a nationaltreasure.

The battle over Goya's paintingwasn't the first skirmish between reli-gion and the world of art, and it cer-tainly won't be the last. The truth is,religiously based censorship by thegovernment has a long history inEurope and the United States - and,thanks to recent political changes, itmay be on the upswing here.

Religious Right activists, feelingemboldened by their successes in theNovember elections, are on the prowlagainst "obscene" or "blasphemous"art, especially in tax-funded museums.

In December, they scored a major

win when the National Portrait Galleryin Washington, D.C., agreed to removea brief video that had been attacked as"sacrilegious" by the Catholic Leaguefor Religious and Civil Rights and otherfar-right groups.

The video in question was part ofa larger exhibit called "Hide/Seek:Difference and Desire in AmericanPortraiture," which explores ques-tions of gender identity in Americanhistory through art. The exhibit con-tains works by several artists, includ-ing Georgia O'Keeffe, David Hockney,Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol.

The controversial video is by thelate David Wojnarowicz, a perform-ance artist who worked in severalmedia. Titled "Fire in My Belly," it isabout four minutes long and includesan 11-second segment that showsants crawling on a crucifix.

Some art critics believed that Woj-narowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992,was making a statement about thesuffering of those who have the dis-ease, but Wendy Olsoff, a galleryowner in New York City who repre-sents Wojnarowicz's estate, said theartist viewed ants as a microcosm ofhuman society and often showedthem in his work crawling on lots ofdifferent objects.

"It was not about Christ," Olsofftold The Washington Post. "It was justabout institutionalized religion."

Nevertheless, the Smithsonianyanked the entire video after House

Speaker John Boehner and MajorityLeader Eric Cantor attacked the work.

"American families have a right toexpect better from recipients of tax-payer funds in a tough economy,"Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Boeh-ner, told The Post. "While the amountof money involved may be small, it'ssymbohc of the arrogance Washing-ton routinely applies to thousands ofspending decisions involving Ameri-cans' hard-earned money."

Cantor went a step further, de-manding that the entire exhibit beshut down. He called it an "outra-geous use of taxpayer money and anobvious attempt to offend Christiansduring the Christmas season."

Perhaps hoping to spark his owninquisition of the medieval variety,U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) a daylater upped the ante, insisting thatCongress launch an official investiga-tion into the matter.

Americans United for Separationof Church and State had a differenttake on the controversy.

"Boehner and Cantor aren't evenin control of the House yet, andalready they're kowtowing to theReligious Right," said Barry W. Lynn,executive director of AmericansUnited. "This is religiously based cen-sorship, pure and simple - and it'sreprehensible.

"If some people believe a showlike this offends their religious sensi-bilities, the answer is for them not togo to it," Lynn added. "They shouldnot have the right to control what artthe rest of us can see."

William Donohue, president of theCatholic League, insisted that theexhibit was an example of "hatespeech." In a press statement, Dono-hue lauded the removal of the video

CHURCH & STATE JANUARY 2011 / PAGE 4 (4)

but asserted that the Smithsonianshould have never allowed it in thefirst place.

Critics say Donohue's organiza-tion, which has an annual budget ofabout $4 million and assets totaling$26 million, tends to see anti-Catho-licism lurking behind every rock.Loud and abrasive, Donohue is adeptat manipulating the media and oftenportrays himself as a spokesman forAmerican Catholics, when in fact fewmembers of that denomination sharehis far-right views.

In May of 2009, Donohue went onthe warpath after the University ofNotre Dame invited President BarackObama to give a commencementaddress. Aided by Fox News Channel,Donohue tried to make a nationalissue of the address, but few Catho-lics cared and Obama delivered thespeech (and received an honorarylaw degree) without a hitch.

Around the same time, Donohuewent ballistic over the release of themovie Angels & Demons. Based onthe popular novel by Dan Brown, thefilm centered on various intrigues atthe Vatican. Donohue demanded thatthe movie include a disclaimer sayingit was fictional, but even church offi-cials disagreed, seeing the movie asharmless summer fluff.

More recently, Donohue attemptedto manufacture a controversy by insis-ting that the Empire State Building bebathed in blue and white light to cele-brate the late Mother Teresa's 100thbirthday on Aug. 26, 2010. When theowners of the building refused, Dono-hue began bombarding the media withdozens of press releases.

But not all of Donohue's fulmina-tions have been so silly. In 2004,Donohue lapsed into an anti-Semiticrant while defending Mel Gibson'smovie The Passion of the Christ.

Appearing on Fox News, Donohuethundered, "Hollywood is controlledby secular Jews who hate Christianityin general and Catholicism in particu-lar. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm notafraid to say it. That's why they hatethis movie." (Donohue has also beenaccused of downplaying the pedophil-ia crisis in the Catholic Church andattempting to pin the blame on gayswho enter the priesthood.)

Donohue may have turned up thevolume, but he's not offering muchelse that's new. His Catholic Leagueinvokes past efforts by sectarianforces determined to control whatentertainment their fellow Americanscan see, read or hear.

In 1933, a Catholic bishop in Cin-cinnati formed a group called the Cath-olic Legion of Decency to combatalleged immorality in movies. Theorganization soon drew support fromsome conservative Protestants and thefollowing year changed its name to theNational Legion of Decency. Its mem-bership, however, remained heavily

Oonohue: Aiways offended

Catholic.The Legion asked its members to

sign a pledge vowing to "remainaway from all motion pictures exceptthose which do hot offend decencyand Christian morality." The idea wasthat Hollywood would respond withmore wholesome entertainment.

The plan met with mixed success.The Legion sometimes went over-board - it condemned the zany 1959Marilyn Monroe comedy Some Like ItHot for cross-dressing - but it man-aged to apply enough pressure thatsome directors shifted operationsoverseas to avoid trouble.

The Legion, however, could notstop the rise of a grittier, more action-oriented cinema in the 1960s. By the1970s films were becoming morerisqué and an ojstensibly voluntary

"production code" that many reli-gious groups had supported wasabandoned by the big studios. TheLegion became defunct and was sub-sumed into the hierarchy of the Cath-ohc Church, which, through its Cath-olic News Service, continues to re-view films today and labels many"morally offensive."

Such rating systems, offered topeople who are free to follow or rejectthem, are a far cry from past practiceswhen some religious figures laboredto prevent anyone from seeing certainfilms or reading some books.

Half a century ago, Americans Uni-ted had its hands full combating reli-giously based censorship. In 1955,Paul Blanshard, a AU-affiliated re-searcher, published The Right toRead, a book chronicling various lit-erary censorship efforts, many led byreligious organizations.

During the great era of "vice sup-pression" in the 1920s and '30s, citieslike Boston and New York werefamous for banning books. NewEngland's Watch and Ward Society(originally known as the NewEngland Society for the Suppressionof Vice) was so powerful that all itsleaders had to do was apply pressureto booksellers to make certain vol-umes unavailable. In Boston libraries,books deemed objectionable werekept in locked rooms.

While much of the material sup-pressed was of questionable merit,some works that are now consideredclassics were censored as well, thankslargely to religiously motivatedactivists. Books targeted by the moralcrusaders included Sinclair Lewis' El-mer Cantry, Theodore Dreiser's AnAmerican TYagedy, Ernest Heming-way's The Sun Also Rises and UptonSinclair's Oil!

Censorship opponents scoredoccasional victories. In 1926, journal-ist H.L. Mencken traveled to Bostonafter learning that copies of the mag-azine he edited, American Mercury,had been removed from newsstandsbecause they contained a hard-hittingstory about a prostitute.

Mencken provoked a court chal-lenge by openly selling copies of themagazine and sparking his ownarrest. The case became a cause

C H U R C H & S T A T E J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 / P A G F 5 ( 5 )

célèbre and put an uncomfortablespotlight on Boston's censorshippractices. Mencken was acquitted.

But the censors were far from fin-ished. As film became a more popularmedium, religious groups began turn-ing their attention to the silver screen.

In 1950, an Italian filmmakernamed Roberto Rossellini released ashort film called The Miracle, the taleof a peasant woman who is con-vinced that the stranger who impreg-nated her is really Saint Joseph.

Outraged Catholic leaders in NewYork City insisted that the "sacrile-gious" film be banned, and govern-ment officials were only too happy tocomply. Church pressure was sointense that New York officials evenrevoked the license of the movie'sdistributor, Joseph Burstyn.

But Burstyn fought back in thecourts. His legal effort reached theU.S. Supreme Court, which ruledunanimously in his favor in 1952.

"Since the term 'sacrilegious' is thesole standard under attack here, it isnot necessary for us to decide, for ex-ample, whether a state may censor mo-tion pictures under a clearly drawnstatute designed and applied to pre-vent the showing of obscene films,"wrote Justice Tom C. Clark for thecourt. "That is a very different ques-tion from the one now before us. Wehold only that under the First andFourteenth Amendments a state may

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not ban a film on the basis of a cen-sor's conclusion that it is 'sacrile-gious.'"

Burstyn v. Wilson was an impor-tant ruling because it derailed states'ability to censor films on grounds ofblasphemy and sacrilege. The deci-sion also made it clear that film, likethe printed word, falls under thescope of the First Amendment's guar-antee of free speech. (In handingdown Burstyn, the high court over-turned a 1915 decision. Mutual FilmCorporation v. Industrial Commissionof Ohio, which declared that movieswere not entitled to First Amendmentprotection because they were purely acommercial enterprise.}

Although official censorship

'This new Congresshas a bull's-eye on artsfunding. I don't thinkthere is any questionthey are going to tar-

get the NEÁ "—U.S. Rep. James P. Moran

boards began to lose power after theBurstyn ruling, some church officialsstill continued to target movies,books and plays they disliked.

Director Martin Scorsese's 1988 filmThe Last Temptation of Christ broughtout picketers, and several local govern-ments - including Dallas, Birminghamand a few parishes in Louisiana -passed symbolic resolutions condemn-ing the movie (which, many lawmak-ers admitted, they had not seen).

One community. Escambia Coun-ty, Fla., went beyond that. CountyCommissioners voted 4-1 to ban thefilm and actually sent a sheriff'sdeputy to the one theater thatplanned to show it to seize the print.

In his 2008 book Hollywood UnderSiege, Thomas R. Lindlof writes thatthe owner of the theater got wind oflaw enforcement's pending arrival,handed the print to a business associ-ate and sent him into the next coun-ty. The man checked into a hotel withthe censored film, and it wasn't long

before a federal judge struck downthe ban.

In recent years, art exhibits havecome under attack. In a celebratedcase from 1999, Rudy Giuliani, thenmayor of New York, attacked theBrooklyn Museum of Art for display-ing an image of the Virgin Mary byartist Chris Ofili (himself a RomanCatholic) that included a piece ofresin-coated elephant dung.

The Catholic League attacked theportrait, as did Archbishop JohnO'Connor. Giuliani tried to cut off cityfunding for the museum and evenevict it from its quarters. Legal actionensued, and a federal court blockedthe Giuliani overture.

Americans United says the recentflap over the Smithsonian does notbode well. The influx of far-right con-servatives in Congress is likely toembolden the Religious Right to stokethe flames of the "culture wars," andpublicly funded museums are low-hanging fruit. Already some membersof Congress are talking about defund-ing the National Endowment for theArts and the National Endowment forthe Humanities, favorite ReligiousRight bugbears.

"This new Congress has a bull's-eye on arts funding," U.S. Rep. JamesP. Moran (D-Va.) told The Washing-ton Post. "I don't think there is anyquestion they are going to target theNEA, the NEH and anything else thatfunds art."

Americans United and its allies arespeaking out. In December, AU joinedthe National Coalition Against Cen-sorship and 12 other organizations toprotest the action at the National Por-trait Gallery.

"The Catholic League may insistthat religious symbols are its propertyand others (especially homosexuals)cannot use them; however, a nationalmuseum is barred by First Amend-ment principles, as well as by its mis-sion to serve all Americans, fromenforcing those views on the rest ofus," asserts the joint statement.

It concludes, "The Smithsonian, ofwhich the National Portrait Gallery ispart, is a public trust serving the in-terests of all Americans. It betrays itsmission the moment it ejects a workwhose viewpoint some dislike." D

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