‘Hate Material’ Ban Sought on NEA Awards

A Virginia-based conservative group filed a federal court suit against the National Endowment for the Arts today, asking for an order barring the NEA from giving grants for “blasphemous and sacrilegious hate material.”

The court action, by the Rutherford Institute, based in Charlottesville, Va., revived a controversy over an exhibit of work by New York multimedia artist David Wojnarowicz called “Tongues of Flame.”

The new court action, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, accuses the endowment and NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer of violating a clause of the First Amendment that bars the government from supporting any officially established religion. The NEA made a $15,000 grant for the Wojnarowicz show’s catalogue to the Illinois State University--whose college gallery organized the show.

The show--currently on view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art--and other work by Wojnarowicz have figured significantly in ongoing protests against NEA grants by conservative politicians and right-wing Christian groups, led by the American Family Assn., of Tupelo, Miss.

Earlier this summer, Wojnarowicz won a court order against the Wildmon organization prohibiting it from distributing drastically cropped reproductions of the artist’s work in a campaign to try to persuade Congress to abolish the NEA.

The Rutherford Institute lawsuit comes days before Congress is to return from its August recess and is scheduled to grapple with legislation to renew the legislative mandate of the NEA and set its 1991 appropriation. Conservative congressmen have filed draft amendments in the House that would specifically prohibit the NEA from supporting art perceived as offensive, blasphemous or sacrilegious.