POLITICIAN WATCH : Cincinnati Obscenity

The trial of Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center and its director on charges that a display of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe constituted pandering obscenity and illegal use of a minor is an appalling abuse of state power.

Still, the trial, which began Monday, already has had one beneficial, if unintended, consequence: It has brought into sharp focus the ultimate consequence of losing the battle over free expression now being waged across this country. For the controversy that began with concerns over the grant-making policies of the National Endowment for the Arts has expanded to include attempts to limit modes of artistic expression as diverse as rap music, conceptual performance and prime-time television.

What the Cincinnati case has done is to uncover the pit at the bottom of this particularly slippery slope. When all the sophistries involving taxpayer subsidies, popular culture and other questions are stripped away, it is clear what zealots like Sen. Jesse Helms and the Cincinnati city fathers intend: Artists and others who refuse to conform to notions of aesthetic propriety concocted by cut-rate Cotton Mathers will be put on trial for what they think, say, write, paint or perform.

If they have their way, Dennis Barrie, the director of a distinguished art museum, will be sent to jail and fined for the crime of hanging in his gallery photographs disapproved of by police and politicians. There is indeed public obscenity in Cincinnati, but Barrie and his colleagues are its victims, not its perpetrators.