Suit Revives Furor Over NEA Grants : Legal: New court action seeks to bar funding of ‘blasphemous and sacrilegious hate material.’ The controversy involves works now on exhibit in Santa Monica.

A Virginia-based conservative group filed a federal court suit against the National Endowment for the Arts on Wednesday, 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 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. The Santa Monica museum said that about 12,000 people had viewed the Wojnarowicz show as of Wednesday morning.

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 Illinois State University--whose college gallery organized the show.

Earlier this month, Wojnarowicz won a court order against the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Assn., of Tupelo, Miss., 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 suit action 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.

The lawsuit identified its nominal plaintiff as David Fordyce, of Culver City, who was active in a 1989 video store pornography controversy in Hermosa Beach. Fordyce did not return calls, but court papers described him as a devout Christian. The arts endowment said it would have no statement on the suit, filed Wednesday morning and announced at a Washington press conference by John Whitehead, founder and president of the Rutherford Institute.

By making the grant, the NEA “unconstitutionally sponsored and endorsed a religion” and “adopted a policy of open and notorious hostility toward religion,” the institute charges in the suit. The suit, for which no hearing date was immediately set, asks for a court order barring future NEA grants that would have the effect of “funding, sponsoring and endorsing works which promote blasphemous and sacrilegious hate material which may be reasonably perceived as governmental sponsorship of hostility towards a particular religion or adherents of a particular religious belief.”

The Rutherford Institute, which identifies itself as “a nationwide nonprofit civil liberties organization specializing in the defense of religious freedom,” has previously been involved in anti-abortion protests. It played a minor role in the 1988 dispute over release of the controversial film “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

The lawsuit targets several specific Wojnarowicz pieces, but focuses particular attention on “Untitled: Genet,” a small photo collage by Wojnarowicz that appears only in the NEA-supported catalogue. The work depicts playwright Jean Genet, with a church in ruins in the background and a background image of a Christ figure apparently shooting heroin into his arm.

The image had already been the focus of complaints by the Wildmon group and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach), who has used it and the Wojnarowicz show as part of a campaign in Congress to severely restrict the subject matter of art the NEA can support.

Wojnarowicz could not be reached for comment, but in court testimony in his successful suit against Wildmon, the artist discussed “Untitled: Genet” in detail, saying the piece was intended as an artistic commentary on the dual problems of drug abuse and AIDS in contemporary society. “I saw (that I had) a few friends who had succumbed to drug abuse,” Wojnarowicz testified, explaining that the collage had been intended to symbolize the traditional role of Christ as a figure who would take on the suffering of believers.