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By LOU HATTER
Rappahannock Newg Staff Writer
When the Middle Street Gallery planned a panel discussion to accompany the opening of its “Sacred Cows” exhibition, the organizers said they hoped the public would attend, “loaded for bear.”
Both the public and the “bear” came to the Town Hall last Saturday night.
Though the panel featured three artists, and the audience was primarily made up of artists also, there proved to be plenty of divergence of views between the artists and also with others in the audience.
Attorney Douglas Baumgardner, the sole non-artist on the panel, drew some heated comments after he suggested that “anti-obscenity” content restrictions seemed, to him, to be a reasonable response to criticism from conservatives.
From a legal point of view, he said, the idea of the government providing money to pay for something judged legally obscene — thus in effect abetting a crime — is wrong.
But, he noted, “there are onerous Constitutional nightmares that confront the drafters of such laws.”
And, Mr. Baumgardner added, “I’m not sure I agree that what we have is real crisis.” He said he sees the debate over public funding as one of “cultural conflict” and a difference of values. “We have a lot of latitude in our freedom. We are fortunate to frame this debate in terms of public funding — rather than in terms of content restrictions on art in general.”
Alice Sims, a painter whose children were placed into protective custody after nude photos she took of them were sent to a drug store for processing, told the group that the changes against her were quickly dismissed largely due to the support she received from the community.
“We received hundreds of letters and petitions ... it is important for artists to support each other — and for non-artists to support us as well.”
Richard Viguerie, a conservative political activist, told the panel that the current controversy is “a microcosm of what is happening across the country. This debate is not about censorship or first amendment rights.” It is, he suggested, about whether artists “have a right t use taxpayers’ money to show pictures that attack our religious beliefs . . . our values . . . our very moral fiber?”
Mr. Viguerie called the controversy “a cultural war,” and vowed, “it ain’t gonna go away. I am angry, I am outraged, that you want to use my tax dollars to put a crucifix in urine, to show one man using another man's mouth as a toilet, to show Christ shooting up heroin . . . Produce anything you want — just don’t ask me to pay for it.”
Panelist Meredith Rode, a painter and teacher at the University of the District of Columbia, replied that "If you are for freedom, then you have to be consistent.
It becomes difficult, she said, to pick which expressions should be allowed and which should be censored because they offend some group. "If you come down on the side of free
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